


Through Incalculable Myriads

by PurpleHydrangeas



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, BAMF Harry Potter, BAMF Hermione Granger, Cornwall, Equestrian!Harry, F/M, Harry Potter was Raised by Remus Lupin and Sirius Black, Involved Grangers, Mental Health Issues, Powerful Harry, Powerful Hermione, Prophecy, Prophetic Dreams, Prophetic Visions, Seer Hermione
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-27
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-09-02 13:06:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 32,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8668705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PurpleHydrangeas/pseuds/PurpleHydrangeas
Summary: Hermione moves to Godric's Hollow when her mother and father obtain new posts, in the hopes that a move would give their daughter a new start. Hermione anticipated this move. It rather comes with having promotions of the future and insights into past lives. And yet, she never anticipated that the green eyed boy she encounters in her visions might actually be alive in this incarnation. When it turns out that he is, and that he remembers her, it becomes clear the stuff of dreams is more complicated than even she had anticipated.





	1. He rode all unarm'd, and he rode all alone. So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war...

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Incalculable Times Again](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8630347) by [PurpleHydrangeas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PurpleHydrangeas/pseuds/PurpleHydrangeas). 



> I asked myself, "What would happen if the Grangers had noticed Hermione's accidental magic and massive psychic ability and, as medical professionals, pathologized it? What would happen if Hermione had spent years on the medical/mental health carousel because her parents said, "Past lives, premonitions, visions? There must be an answer!" and acted upon it, in order to help her? 
> 
> Please, please, mind your triggers before you read. There is a discussion of psychotic breaks, personality disorders, dissociative episodes, resentment of mental health professionals, and yet more pathologizing of psychic ability.
> 
> Naturally, I feel that mental health treatment is vital for anyone who wants/needs/benefits from it. I just wanted to be clear that neither am I mocking people with paranormal abilities, actual mental health concerns, or any combination of both. I just thought it very interesting to see two concerned parents use their background in this way. 
> 
> Chapter title comes from Sir Walter Scott's Lochinvar.

Hermione Granger wasn’t afraid. The girls at her school in Crawley teased when they found out she was moving, sniping that maybe the Beast of Bodmin would eat her. Yet other girls insisted she would be fine, because no beast, no matter how beastly, would want to eat her and risk getting all of her hair caught in their teeth. 

No, she wasn’t afraid. She knew what she had survived.

She had survived, and her soul had thrived, under war and famine, execution and political insurrection, murder and sorrow, oppression and triumph. She had faced down enemy invaders, killers, and queens. To be afraid of primary schoolgirls would be a slap in the face to the soul that indwelled her personality. She might never remember the details, but she knew that people were eternal, and in not forgetting that, Hermione had a strength others refused to choose for themselves. 

This too, she often said, shall pass. I too, she sometimes thought, shall pass. Thereby, she knew she had to focus on her goals and make the most of them. Life on the whole was a grand adventure, and she wasn’t about to waste it away without appreciation and anticipation. 

Hermione just smiled, and packed up her desk and bid her teachers farewell, knowing that even they were glad to see her go. Why wouldn’t they be, when she was so far ahead of the pack and so very strange that teaching her had to be a giant headache? 

 The things her classmates said didn’t matter. This move was her fate. When they teased about the name of the village, or the fact that people would run away thinking she was the Beast, Hermione just smiled. When they said that her parents were moving away to somewhere no one knew how mad she was, Hermione agreed affably. There was no shame in admitting the truth. 

 Hermione had been anticipating the change for years. That’s why, largely, the things the students in her class said and did never bothered her for long. They didn’t matter, because their presence in her life was transient, if painful at the time. She was meant to learn from them, and then move on, and the time had come to make that transition. 

That’s what life was, after all, a learning process. And if there was one thing Hermione respected, it was learning. Her Mum had accepted the position in and her Dad had found another job because Psychologist Number Six agreed that a change of pace in life would be good for Hermione. Her parents were keen to trust the doctors, and not their daughter. Hermione didn’t exactly blame them. Some things had to happen, and if they got her to Godric’s Hollow, Hermione wasn’t going to question them. 

She had always known, somehow beyond reason and intellect, that they were meant to move to Godric’s Hollow. Things had been revealed to her in dreams, first the outside of a comfortable house, and then the gardens behind it that opened onto the moor. Yet more expansive gardens had filled her dreams, enabling her to know that there was more in store than just a new home, though she could not hypothesize.

 When her mother had come home with news of a job offer, the dreams she’d been having for months had begun to make sense. Hermione accepted the move with a flat affect, knowing that any great display of excitement based in her foreknowledge would encourage her parents to call the whole thing off. 

So Hermione kept mum, packing up her room with a minimum of fuss. She held back a few books for the long drive on A30, but did not protest when Mum packed away her drop spindle, her quilting frame, and her embroidery hoops to be unpacked when they arrived. There were some sacrifices to be made in the service of a greater goal. 

As she finished the last walkthrough of her home, Hermione made a note in her Filofax of how she had spent the morning, and made note of what she planned to do this afternoon. Psychologist Number Two had suggested such a process. Her parents were forever asking if she understood her timetable, and what she had done all day, so Hermione simply left the book on the counter to avoid conversation. It was better than the constant fussing. 

They set off on the first Saturday after the end of term. Hermione saw the tears in her mother’s eyes as they pulled away. Her mother wasn’t sad to leave, but she was scared. Hermione understood why she was happy to go. She had something of a reputation as her daughter’s mother, and who wouldn’t want to leave those labels behind? Even if, Hermione thought glumly, they had labeled her in the first place. 

She’d overheard them talking so many times. Her mother had cried, begged her father to tell him what he thought would become of her. Her father hadn’t known, and had been at a loss to make her mother feel better. They worried for her, they cried together, and they tried to be as proactive as possible. 

 Hermione didn’t know why they worried so much. She would be okay in life. She had done this before, even if not exactly like this, and she knew life had a plan. She had known, somehow, from her earliest memories that she was meant to do something worthwhile, and all of this was mere preparation.

Her parents were too terrified to see that, though. They fully believed she had any number of mental health issues. The diagnoses could never be agreed upon. The powers that be punted around so many disorders and concerns from Dissociative Identity Disorder to Schizophrenia, from major depression to delusions, from Schizoaffective Disorder to ‘we don’t know what this is’ that even Hermione could not keep track. They were fairly certain she had a complex personality disorder, but could not conclusively diagnose a child. 

Hermione had promised the day before that this move would be turning over a new leaf, and of that she was confident. Hermione knew her parents did not hold her to any such promise. They never did blame her for what they saw as her medical issues.

They were good parents, and they took her all over the UK to find the best specialists who might have the ability to help a young girl who spoke more languages than she would admit, believed that she had lived past lives and could recount historical details of lost civilizations and past ways of being, and had premonitions of the future. 

As such, there were a lot of medical visits.

Hermione never once saw them complain over the impact this had on their lives. Surely, they resented that they didn’t have a normal daughter who watched _Top of the Pops_ rather than knitted, sewed, and enjoyed homeopathy, and that was the tip of the iceberg. They routinely ruled out cancers, tumors, hemispheric issues in her brain, thyroid disorders, and any physical illness. The large focus was on mental health and wellness, and so she had spent most of her life in and out of talk therapy. 

Hermione didn’t blame her parents for sometimes struggling with the child she had been and the person she was becoming. She couldn’t let herself, not when Psychologist Number Five had suggested putting her in dance classes and on the swim team in order to create a more pleasing reality than the fictions of her mind. Her mother had cried when she’d began to country dance in tap class at the age of six, quite unaware of the pain she was putting her mother through, only happy to know the steps and feel pretty doing them. 

Hermione knew, that despite her parents’ hopes, there was no leaving who she was behind. She did not want to leave the knowledge she carried behind her, lost to the mists of the past, not when the knowledge she carried could help people. She liked herself, no matter what anyone else said. She also knew that in moving, they were inching closer to a destiny that Hermione could not articulate, but felt in her bones. 

* * *

Hermione let her eyes close as they merged onto A303. Without any real effort, she was plunged lightly into a vision, one that filled her with warmth and hope.

In her mind’s eye, she saw a girl she had once been running across the earth, her uncut hair fluttering in the wind as her dress flapped around her legs. Her sense was that she was glad to be free, glad to have been able to come to Falaise and to William. The names meant nothing to Hermione, but everything to the person she was experiencing. 

The girl, perhaps fourteen, raced up a hill, and shouted, “I’ve won! I am Mistress of all I see!” In the distance, there was a castle and sweeping vistas of land. Hermione was struck by its beauty, and felt that this place was home for this personality. 

She jumped, when a voice laughed from behind her, whirling to exclaim, “You cheated!” 

The horse’s bridle he clasped said it all. He was broad and craggy, but there was mirth in his eyes. The avatar Hermione was seeing in her mind’s eye looked to his face, and Hermione saw that his eyes were green. 

Her companion nodded, and bowed theatrically. “I admit nothing. A footrace is a footrace. You did not specify whose feet I had to use.” 

The girl she had once been hollered, laughing though her voice was passionate. “You are a rouge! A scoundrel! The highest in all Normandy!”

As the wind whipped, they stood in silence for a second. Her companion slanted a glance her way. “And yet, had you won you would have settled for being mistress of all you see. I won, and therefore I will not let you settle. I won, and so you shall be my Duchess and my Queen. I won, and so Normandy and England will kneel at your feet in supplication and worship for all time.”

“That’s blasphemous!” The girl insisted, with true piety. The man, Hermione supposed his name was William, was correct. At this moment, Hermione knew he was relying on psychic ability to know that he would be king. 

“You know that there is no hell for me, and so the Pope’s threats are baseless. There is no hell for me.” The man cared not for anything but the eternal truth, “Only the purgatory of waiting to find you, and the heaven of your company. All else is merely the void—”

* * *

“Hermione!” Her father’s voice shattered the vision. Hermione jerked against the leather seat of the back seat, and shook head as her father spoke, “What’s that you were saying?”

Hermione gathered that she had been mumbling. She blinked, her eyes crinkling in the harsh sunlight. She felt languid, and longed to be within that vision, longed to go back to the past, if only for another few moments in communion with that soul. 

Instead, she smiled. “I was only talking about my book.” A bit of information came through just before her mind gave up the vestiges of the past. “Do either of you know anything about William the Conqueror?” 

“Wasn’t he the really short king who invaded England from Normandy?” Mum ventured, her body language screaming even through the rearview mirror. Even so, she did not speak her mind. 

Hermione did not think through her response, “No, he was very broad and craggy. His wife was very short.”  Hermione tapped her book, “At least according to this book.” 

Her father sighed. Hermione glanced down quickly. She was reading a book about computing and coding. 

Wonderful. 

* * *

Eventually, they came to the roundabout that led them out of the flow of traffic and through a small village. There was a small shop, a butcher, and a post office, nestled here and there in the cosy picturesque place. Hermione’s body buzzed with realized potential. 

It was almost teatime as they pulled up to a house, with a wide front garden and a charming blue door, back a dirt track with fields all around, far out from the village proper. Hermione noted that there was, in fact, a sigil carved into the top stair, though Hermione still did not know what it meant, no matter how much research her vision had compelled her to do. 

Her father parked the lorry, leaving room for the moving company’s arrival, and encouraged her to go inside. Hermione was glad to go alone, with only her battered copy of _Persuasion_. She had seen this house so many times in her head, that seeing it in person felt almost like a test. She knew she could trust herself.  

Hermione went inside, passing the entryway, and heading through the lounge. There was, in fact, a stone fireplace. Hermione was filled with peace. She knew to trust that emotion. It was not a blank nothingness, but rather the sense that she was right where she was meant to be in this moment, and that was no small thing. It was a feeling she chased, and knew to be fleeting. 

She was reluctant to give up her solitude as she heard the front door open, so she went upstairs. She walked down the corridor with purpose, and came to the last bedroom, the bedroom with the plain wooden door and the glass knob. As she had in her dreams, Hermione pushed it open and heard the door creak, the sound echoed by the affirmation of memory. 

The floors remained wooden. The walls remained white, with dark wooden trim to match the floors. The windows opposite the door flooded the room with light. There was a window seat. As she had so many times in her memory, Hermione sat down there, pressing herself to the window and opened her book. 

Beyond her window, the moors that spread forth as far as the eye could see beyond the garden were unspoiled by any other human habitation. To some, they might have looked desolate and forbidding, green and rocky for all to see, with little in the way to soften their impact. To Hermione, they were a measure of peace and joy that she had long anticipated but refused to let herself expect. 

She was home. The stream in the back garden babbled onward like the flow of time. For a long moment, Hermione felt that time stood still in recognition of her finally being where she most needed to be, at least for the moment. 

* * *

Within two days, they were unpacked enough to be settled in and eating off of plates rather than napkins. There was no takeaway in Godric’s Hollow, so if Hermione never again saw a packet of crips, it would be too soon. She was quite happy to have a functional kitchen, with a proper cellar. 

Mum left for the hospital and Hermione begged off of organizing the kitchen with her Dad to go for a walk. He was starting work in a few days, and she was determined to get away from him, as he was on a roll to have the house in order. Hermione could not stand one more discussion of where to put tinned food. In the bin, that’s where. Tinned food was just strange. 

Her father was reluctant to let her go, for the obvious reasons. She promised she would return promptly and made ever allusion to the fact that, whatever they thought she had, it was not something that would cause her to wander off and die on the moor.

 Allowing that she felt the need to clear her head allowed her to make a quick escape with a few books, and her current embroidery project in her bag. She was intent on following the stream down the moor. Hermione let herself out of the gate that fenced off the back garden and began to walk. 

Hermione was glad to be away from the house for a little while. Her mother had taken away her L.M. Montgomery books because she was meant to be organizing books, and not reading them. Only, no matter how high up her mother put the books, they floated down to Hermione and landed on her lap. And, well, after her reading lamp working after Dad had unplugged it last night because she really had to finish the chapter, she wasn’t in good standing with them. 

They didn’t believe her. She logically understood why, and she knew why the various psychologists included lying in what they saw as her pathology. Only so many strange things might happen before they turned to logical explanation. 

They believed she lied, though they did not blame her for the inclination to lie, only held her responsible for the consequences of those actions. Hermione did not lie. She didn’t. She really hadn’t lied about her _Ramona_ book being torn just days after she’d gotten it. When her mother had looked, there was no tear. Wishing she didn’t make it go away, and Hermione knew that Ellie had torn it. 

The stream bent, and Hermione followed it down, until she came to a river. She did not know its name, but she resolved to read more about the village and this portion of Cornwall. She was largely barred from historical reading materials, just as she was barred from joining historical associations and preservation societies. 

Hermione had once thrown a screaming fit at some museum because they weren’t banking the peat fire correctly, and would have burnt down the demonstration cottage without her input. No one remembered that she had saved lives. Her parents only remembered her anger of being discounted and derided as a non-expert. They only remembered their seven year old daughter taking over and handling a situation with effortless ease. 

Hermione passed countless herds of ponies as she walked along in her wellies. The weather wasn’t damp, but she couldn’t find her boots, and given that she had just trampled through a stream, Hermione was glad she hadn’t worn trainers.

Her bag jogged on her back as she hoofed it up the large incline, passing rocks and ponies and stones and patches of wet and tall grass. When she came to the top of a large hill, Hermione could see Dartmoor in the distance. In the other direction, she could see two hills. 

There were rocks everywhere. Hermione was contented to find a large piece of granite and lean against it, alone and happy for it. Her bum was in the grass, and her feet were splayed out before her, as she looked down towards the surface of the earth. 

Somehow, it hurt to be around people who had no real awareness of the world around them. She much preferred to be alone. She unzipped her bag, and pulled out her embroidery, looking out into the great wilderness before her. Sticking the needle into the fabric, Hermione let herself relax. 

She had been working on some placemats for her dresser in her new room. She was almost done with the first one, and was now doing the bland work of repetitious stitches along the boarder. She finished the left edge when she realized that the rock was digging into her back. Hermione stuck the needle into the fabric, her hands feeling tingly and relaxed. 

Hermione could not help but let herself reach out to her that part of herself from where the visions and the knowing came. Hermione saw herself, the personality of the moment that her eternal soul was indwelling, walking up this same hill, not far from where she was sitting. Hermione noted with some dispassionate displeasure that she evidently did not outgrow being short and rather rotund. Still, this future impression of herself was wearing a thick wooly jumper and calling out happily to a companion.

The vision faded before she could see anything more. 

* * *

 

After a few moments of just enjoying the tension-free sensation of her body, Hermione stood. She could stand here and look out forever, but if there was one thing she knew, it was that the world was for exploring. And clearly, there was much of it left to see. 

She followed the boundary stones until she found a footpath and entered the woods. The trees were thick with leaves, and the path was shaded and warm. Hermione was lost in thought, and didn’t see the big black shaggy dog bounding out of the corpse of trees. The animal knocked into her, and Hermione fell back onto the ground with a thump that startled birds in there overhanging branches.

Hermione rose to her feet, the dog looking on apologetically. “Well, who are you?” Hermione asked, as the dog leaned against her as if to take up some of her weight, “No harm done to you, either, I hope?”

The dog looked to her hair, and Hermione realized that she had grass in her hair. She brushed it away and petted the dog, whose thick tail waved happily, the long strands of hair swishing like a mop. It was abundantly clear there were no other humans nearby, after spending a few minutes with the dog in like fashion. 

Carefully, she reached for the tag round his neck, not on a thick and serviceable collar, but rather on a thin chain. Hermione wondered if perhaps that was a choking hazard. She looked to the tag, a simple silver disk that read: _Padfoot. If lost, return to Moony._ On the back it added, _Do not feed._

Hermione was dismayed to find no address or number. She wasn’t going to leave a dog on the moor. She wasn’t allowed pets at home. Her various medical professionals and talk therapists had declared that a bad idea, given that, so said they, she showed little interest in the world outside of her head. 

That wasn’t true. 

Hermione loved to do things, to explore, and to read. Her way of being just was too atypical for them to try to understand. Hermione begged them to find some symptom of maladjustment in her life, but even her profound giftedness was symptomatic in their eyes.  

Mum said that of course she wasn’t mad, even though she had seen so many doctors and therapists and social workers that her head struggled to keep track of them. Not only because of the visions, but also because she frequently knew things they said she could never possibly know, and because she had once talked very frankly about lives she had once lived, but lived no longer. 

In a recent life, she had been a suffragette. She had nearly always been female, and a citizen of what would become the United Kingdom, save for early incarnations, but she only really remembered bits and pieces as they came to her. They faded unless she made note of them. It wasn’t as though her whole life was centered on remembering incarnations, only that they came to the fore of her mind from time to time. 

 Beyond her tendency to be born on these isles as a woman, there was much variance in the lives her mind knew and her heart trusted, even as they came to her in bits and pieces. That said, she did not believe that she was them, only that some part of her soul had been. There was a profound difference in this distinction that no one else saw.  

Dad said she had a creative mind and that one day, she’d write down her stories and make the world a better place. They both said those things with worry in their eyes. She wasn’t allowed a pet, not after she had made fast friends with her grandmother’s cat.

That same day, she had corrected her grandmother who had incorrect information about Mary, Queen of Scots. She’d spoken with a French accent. French. Hermione knew. Granny had cried that a Scottish queen had a Scottish accent. Finally, Hermione had demanded, “Were you there? No? Well, I was, and she spoke English with a French accent!” 

Somehow Mr. Toodles had been blamed for this outburst, and for the resultant way Hermione broke a painting. Psychologist Number Three said that a pet would cause her to withdraw into her historical fantasies or into her conversations with them, so no pets were allowed in the Granger house, not even the goldfish she’d won once. She’d had to give it to another child, and had cried for three days.

She still resented her parents for trusting that stupid doctor and his suppositions over her truth. She knew the truth and she had told them it plainly, and they hadn’t believed her. Even if they did not understand the things she could do or the things that happened around her, at least they ought to know that she was more trustworthy than some doctor who hadn’t even listened to anything she had said, or some other doctor who hadn’t realized she was lying to get out of there. 

But there could be no pets at the Granger house, resentment of that fact or not. 

The only thing to do was look for his family. Hermione patted him again, “Well, Mr. Padfoot, what say we find your family? If not, you can home with me until we do find them.”

Was it her imagination, or was the dog laughing? He scampered off, and then scampered back, as if to say that he knew very well where he was going. Still, Hermione could not let him go off on his own. She made this very plain to him, “Humans are not allowed to leave dogs behind. It’s not done. I’d worry for you.”

And so, they began to tramp along, the dog hopping and skipping. Hermione felt it nice to talk to a living being that didn’t judge her, and felt herself free to chat with him. When they to a wall with a gap in it, Hermione let the dog wiggle through first, following carefully. He seemed happy to be in the lead, and led her confidently around a right turn, a left bend, a stile, and through a small stream, low in difference to summer’s heat. 

“I hope you know where you’re going, Padfoot.” Hermione called, tramping across a vacant field as the dog woofed happily. “I’m utterly lost myself.” 

The dog tilted his head, and came behind her, as though to herd her like a sheep. Hermione laughed, and took his point, “I shan’t doubt you.” 

Despite her promise, Hermione began to feel some doubt as Padfoot trotted across a stream, and left the path to head more deeply into the forrest. Hermione called, “We ought to follow the path!” 

Padfoot barked and ran. Hermione had no choice but to follow, knowing not what could befall him. She ran, and he led her on a merry chase. Her legs were burning and her lungs burned as the dog skittered on ahead. He plopped down into the dirt, and rolled over. Hermione panted up to him, noticing for the first time a stone wall and a gate. The dog nudged the gate. 

“Is this your home?” Hermione asked, skeptical because the gate was firmly shut. The dog actually nodded, his panting tongue lolling out of his mouth, “How’d you get out, then, if the gate is shut?”

The dog whimpered, and so, unable to resist any animal’s plea, Hermione pushed open the gate and walked down the path. It bent on ahead, and Hermione shifted her backpack. Padfoot whined, and waved a paw, as if to apologize for not being able to carry it. Hermione patted his head, “You sir, are a gentlemen of the first water.”

He preened. Hermione stopped when she saw the house rising on a hill in front of her. She spluttered. Padfoot looked at her as if to say, “Don’t mind the old pile. It’s a giant doggy bed, really.” 

The grandeur and charm of the modest country estate wasn’t the point. Hermione wasn’t about to tell Padfoot that while she had never seen the house, that the gardens flanking the house were literally the stuff of dreams. All of the plants had served as a dreamscape so many times that coming here felt as though she was visiting an old friend. 

The house had a conservatory on the side, and was made entirely out of local stone, which matched not only several smaller outbuildings but also a nearby stable. There were several horses in the pasture to the west. They approached the house, and Hermione began to look for a side door. She knew better than to hop up to the front door with a muddy dog. 

“Suppose you find me your doggy door?” Hermione suggested. 

Padfoot did not take kindly to that suggestion, though Hermione thought it very prudent. He gestured with his giant canine head to the front door and huffed. Hermione rolled her eyes, and couldn’t resist urging him to the side of the house towards the kitchen gardens. 

He barked, and ran off into the gardens before Hermione could make heads or tails of what to do. She did not want to leave him unattended, and yet, she was well aware that she was trespassing on private property of a manor house. Perhaps someone famous lived here, like Patrick Stewart.

Hermione would probably swallow her tongue if she met him. She thought his interpretations of Shakespeare to be wonderfully authentic, and she would and did know how it ought to be done. 

Hermione thereby began to turn back, only to spy the back of a young man who was walking up the main stairs, as though they had only just missed one another. It was, she thought, a stroke of fate that they had crossed paths so that she might return his dog. “Hello?” She called out, “Have you lost a dog?”

And he turned around, there on the stairs, the sun flanking him as he squinted through glasses towards her. Even at this distance, she knew those eyes. She saw them all the time. Hermione lost her breath. She did, it seemed, swallow her tongue. 

This was literally the animation of a recurring dream. She had always assumed it to be of a past life, because she had always felt that she knew this person. In her dreams, he had always waved and she’d gone back from wherever she had come. It was but a single moment, a promise. Hermione was content to let the dream play out, and raised a hand in greeting, and lifted a foot to take a step back. 

It seemed her dream’s companion did not have the same inclination in the flesh. He was running, full out, running towards her. Hermione didn’t dare move, mostly because she knew that this deviation was not of her making, but his. He skidded to a stop, gravel kicking up around him. “Big back dog, goes by the name of Padfoot?”

Hermione nodded. Her knees were shaking, her heart pounding. He didn’t seem impacted. Hermione was screaming and laughing inside, declaring that if she didn’t wake up from this vision, she didn’t much care. 

She did not care. She knew those eyes. She knew this boy. She knew the man he had been, if once, then she knew him in a thousand ways and a thousand times. This boy, whoever he was, had been her companion, her friend, her brother, her partner, across every incarnation she could remember, which were admittedly few. She knew this soul, even if she did not know the person he now was.

A shiver went up her spine. Other dreams merged with reality, and Hermione wondered once again if her dreams were more than mere expressions of her subconsciousness, even in this. His eyes were deeply green behind a pair of glasses, deeper than even her dreams had conveyed, and suddenly, unbidden, she realized that she had missed this boy she had never met. Some part of her concluded that she wasn’t going to be lonely anymore. She’d learned the lessons that loneliness was meant to teach her, and it was time to move on to the next challenge.

Hermione was plunged into a flip book of flashes that conveyed visions and impressions. It felt like she was falling through ice. This moment had happened a thousand times. Once, in church. Once when her couriers had stepped aside to reveal him to her. Countless times by seeming happenstance that had never really been happenstance. Over and over they had met. And yet, the moments each felt unique and exactly the same. 

Slowly, the flashes of moments stopped and one incarnation rose to the fore. It was her most recent life that she could recall, which largely explained why recall was so much stronger, even if she did only get snippets. She had been a suffragette, working to earn women the right to vote. He, the son of a prominent opponent to the movement. They had been childhood friends, driven apart by politics and the pressures of the expectations of those around them. 

For whoever they had once been, or would one day be, Hermione was glad that they had this moment. She knew that this reality trumped all others, which were mere impressions and faint ghosts of the fullness of this truth. “I’m Hermione.”

He grinned, and Hermione’s stomach flipped over. His voice was soft as he confessed, “This time, I’m called Harry.”

“This time?” Hermione knew her knees were shaking, “As opposed to what, pray tell?” 

He laughed, saying nothing but admitting everything, and hugged her tightly, lifting her off her feet for a scant second. Hermione returned the embrace, feeling so totally at peace with the world that the tears spilling from her eyes onto his button front were tears of joy and utter relief. Hermione felt like she had come home, after nearly seventy years. 

It had been so long since someone, since he, had seen her and known her and held her. Hermione made no bones about getting as close as she might, committing this moment to eternal memory. He smelled of old books, leather, fresh grass, something that transcended definition or categorization that was merely part of him, carried down though the centuries. 

He was solid and real and alive. He knew her. He knew her. And she knew him. Solemnly, Hermione replied, “My mother says you should never tell anyone about your incarnations.” 

“She didn’t mean you couldn’t tell me.” He looked up at the sky, and then he looked at her again, “Why should there be secrets between us?” 

Hermione had a sudden flash of this boy, in her mind’s eye, as a king, as a leader amongst men. She was looking into those eyes in a scene in her mind’s eye, those same eyes, as her avatar pledged her trust and troth as he gripped reins and urged his horse onward. The image suited him. 

He seemed to understand how she was feeling and assured her. “I won’t tell.”

Hermione grinned. “Is this how you always react when a girl brings back your dog? You hug her and tell her impossible truths?” 

“There are no impossible truths.” Harry returned, “Only improbable ones. Or so my Papa says. He’s an activist. Dad says it comes with the job, but I think it’s because they got saddled with me.” He grinned, “And yes, I’m going to hug you. What were you thinking, martyring yourself?”

It was clear that Harry was the sort to be a bit arrogant and hold grudges. He was fussed up over something that had happened eighty years ago, fussed up enough to demand answers as though they were his due. Inwardly, Hermione sighed. Make a man a king and an emperor a few times, and went soul deep. Somewhere inside of herself, Hermione thought that no lesser man would be able to keep up with her.

“We got the vote, didn’t we?” Hermione grinned, allowing herself to channel information she had not known until he’d asked the question, “And I knew somehow in that moment that you’d thrown yourself over something to protect one of your men.”

Harry had the good grace to let the subject drop. Hermione surveyed him. He was tall, lanky in a way that spoke to genetics and good health, adequate food and lots of sunlight and love. His hair was inky and messy, sticking up at all angles in tufts. Without checking herself, Hermione reached up and smoothed down parts of his hair. 

He scoffed, but there was no censure in it. When she finished, he caught her hand, turned her palm over, clearly reluctant to let her go as his voice thickened again, “Please tell me you live here, that you’re not here on holiday. There’s so much I need to tell you, Hermione, things you know about but probably don’t remember.”

“We’ve got time.” Hermione promised, “All the time in the world.”

In this moment, Hermione didn’t care about time, didn’t care what about what came next. All she cared about was that she had found someone to accept, and someone who accepted her. They weren’t thrown together by fate.

She knew that she was consciously choosing to be friends with this boy who felt so deeply for someone he’d never met that he was willing and able to shed tears in her arms, choosing to be friends with this boy who wanted her opinions and didn’t hurt her when she reached out, who smiled when she teased him and accepted her fussing. Those, after a life of isolation and reflection, were no small things. 

“Lifespans aren’t that long, yet.” Harry replied, offering her his left arm. Hermione took it. “We’ve probably got another 290 years.”

Hermione laughed. The idea of living that long was funny, but she understood well his sentiment. 

Harry stopped and turned to her. Hermione stopped laughing under his concentrated consideration. “What?”

“I can’t…” He looked as though he wanted to say something desperately, “It doesn’t matter. None of that matters. Please trust me. I’ll give it up, if I have to, to keep you with me, prophecy or—”

Hermione wanted to say that she would ask him to renounce nothing. Dimly, she remembered standing by his side through turmoil far greater than anything ongoing in this modern time of relative peace, where wars were fought far away from their shores. 

Before she could ask about a prophecy, they were interrupted. A bolt of fear rushed through her. They should not have been discussing this so openly. 

“What,” A voice harshly and quickly demanded, “Is going on here?” There was a man coming forth from the gardens, his head reared back as though he had not expected to find her here, like this, in his son’s arms.

Harry spun on his heel, every bit the warrior, keeping her behind him. It was hard to remember that they were only nearly eleven. Hermione decidedly broke his stance and came to his side. Things were different now. She hardly needed his protection. 

“I’ve brought back your dog, Padfoot.” Hermione addressed the man, “You should really keep him on a lead if you’re going to leave the gates open.” 

Hermione hefted her bag, shifting it down from where Harry had jostled it. She was entirely reluctant to tell this imposing man anything. 

Harry was torn between asking her to stay and talking to his father. Hermione reverted to Latin, knowing that Harry understood it and likely his father did not, “We’ll discuss this later. I promise you I’ll come back.” 

“Please don’t leave me, Hermione.” Harry cried, reaching out to lope around her. His tone was as desperate as his gaze, “Please, please, just wait.”

What did he think, that she wanted to leave him?

Why was he acting like she was being unreasonable for knowing that nothing could be revealed to anyone else in this fashion?

She didn’t know how they had handled this issue in previous incarnations, but given that they were so young now, something would have to be said to explain their friendship. Hermione wasn’t saying that they were automatically going to be anything more than friends, but there was a certain point in time that a soul simply started to gravitate toward a soul who knew them, who resonated with them, for lack of a better word. 

“Your father is furious.” Hermione shook her head.

Seeing the heartbreak in his eyes was by far the hardest thing she had ever had to witness, let alone cause, “I don’t know what you could possibly say to him. I don’t understand any of this, and I’m not going to get you into trouble. I don’t want to leave you, but if I don’t go, your parents will tell my parents and I’ll be the nutter who thinks you’ve been in her past lives with her!” 

“I’ve asked a question.” His father interjected, “And I have yet to be answered.” 

Harry glanced at his father, and pushed his glasses up his nose, “Just a second, please.” 

His father did not look overly pleased by this response. 

“Hermione…” Harry switched to Old Cornish, as though that language could possibly convey deeper meaning given that it was the language of the place around them, or had one been. “They know. They believe me.”

“How could they possibly?” Hermione did not distrust what it was saying, but if his parents believed him about the experiences, why didn’t hers? What made her so different? It was possible that they believed him about his own perceptions, but they were unlikely to believe that he remembered her, and her own parents wouldn’t even get as far as his apparently had done. “We’ll discuss this privately later.” 

Hermione glanced towards his father, and then back at Harry. “For now, you should answer him. I’ll follow along with whatever you say.” 

Harry said nothing, the stubborn ass. Had he always been stubborn? Was that a facet of his soul that came through on every incarnation? 

She switched back to English, “If you could give me directions towards Godric’s Hollow?” She tried to smile at the man as she addressed him, tried to make him feel slightly more comfortable at the display he had just witnessed. 

Hermione herself had a headache. It sort of was sad. She felt desolate and angry, let down quickly from the heady joy back into the reality of life. This was good, yes, but there would be no explaining it. And now, it was very likely that if she brought him round, that they would begin to say that she was drawing others into her delusions. 

She hadn’t seen Harry since the outbreak of World War One, and here they were having an argument. This had to be a new low, even for them. Hermione shot a look of apology towards Harry, and began to walk down the long drive, the crushed shells and gravel crunching under her rubber soles. 

“Harry, suppose you tell your old man just what happened here?” His father asked, but Harry was already striding away from him. He sighed, “Harry!”

Hermione did not look up as his leggy strides shortened to match her own. 

“I feel a little bit jilted, you know.” Harry insisted, “I know, in fact, that I have promised you in multiple lifetimes that where you went I would go. My memory’s a bit fuzzy, you know, but I figure one of those still counts.”

Hermione wanted to shriek with rage. She was not his wife. She was trying to desperately be what he needed in this life. He needed a friend who was going to keep them both out of hospital or governmental experiment stations. She knew full well that there was a limit to the flummery her parents would believe, and hauling someone else into this without being certain that his parents would back them up entirely was impossible. 

“I bade you leave, you left.” Hermione knew in the back of her mind that they had not spent incarnations in each other’s pockets. In several, they had gone so far to help each other grow that they had been adversaries. “Why don’t you take a page from your own playbook?”

“See, I’ve evolved beyond all that pillaging shit. I’m a pacifist, largely.” Harry shrugged, “Seems your social justice bent rubbed off on me at some point.” He literally bounced as he stepped, as though he had waited eons to tell her that. Hermione supposed he had, in some fashion. “Isn’t that great?”

“I applaud you.” Hermione returned, glancing behind her to see the man standing where he had been abandoned, “But if word gets out, I’m going to be in a heap of trouble, and so are you.”

Harry was not phased, and Hermione resented his present naivety. “My parents died, and that taught me one thing, Hermione.” He gripped the gate, and Hermione spun around to ask him to leave off when his words hit home.

Her heart broke for the little boy he had once been. She would have done anything to spare him that pain.

Not moving, nor acting as though he should, he continued, “It taught me that family is important. You’re my family. Nothing in this universe supersedes you.” He said this as though it was calm, rational, fact, and not the giddy joy he’d soon overcome, “I’ve had my fill of war and glory. I just want one lifetime of peace, wherein my biggest worry is our continued well-being and happiness, and this time, I’m going to get that for us.” 

Hermione heard the conviction in his voice. She wanted desperately to believe that this goal was within their means to accomplish. 

Hermione felt her empathy well. He must have felt so lost and alone when he had lost his parents. “I’m so sorry you lost your parents.”

“I never knew them.” Harry’s voice was soft, “But my Godparents love me, and my parents did all they could for me. I’m going to do right by them.”

 “I believe you.” Hermione told him, knowing that sometimes another person just needed to know that someone out there accepted their truth, their viewpoints. She believed that Harry would do whatever he set his mind to, “I always have, and I always will. You have to let me go, Harry.”

“Can’t I walk you home?” Harry asked, confessing, “I just need to know you’re safe. Your eyes are so sad, Hermione. I don’t think I can bear it.”

“I’m contented.” Hermione insisted, “I am happy to have found you, to know that you are well, that you are loved and accepted.” Some part of her had wondered after the soul she had never known, but had always encountered in past life memories, visions, and impressions. “I want nothing more for you.”

“And you would walk out of my life, without acknowledging that I too feel the same fear, the same worry for you?” Harry asked, as Hermione pulled the gate and found that it swung forward and open quickly, despite Harry’s hand above her own. 

He continued as she stepped through the gate, “You would give me no assurances of your own wellness beyond a paltry admission of contentment on what has been the best day of my life, that is slowly becoming one of the worst?”

“We will find a way.” Hermione promised, from within herself. She wanted this more than anything else. “We will find a way to live our truth.”

* * *

Hermione left Harry at the gate of his drive, and began to walk. She made her way back to the footpath, and took the opposite path, her feet moving as if by rote. How could he be so happy, so easygoing about this? There would be no way she could say anything to her parents without a huge risk, without risking being removed from Godric’s Hollow. 

She was not confident enough of her acting ability to make as though she had met a boy who looked at her like she was the moon and stars in the village shop.  She was not confident that their immediate ease around one another wouldn’t be totally suspect to her parents, who would see their affinity as they saw everything else in her life, as a symptom. After all, instant affinity with another person was largely symptomatic of attachment issues. 

Hermione too, felt a pang of fear for her own selfish motives. She did not want Harry to know that she had spent the last decade under constant watch, constant hovering, from parents who loved her well and yet knew in their hearts that they believed her to be mentally unbalanced. 

She did not want to shake what Harry thought he knew. If his image of her gave him strength, she would not change it. Also, she was worried that his desire to be friends with her would change once he knew about all of the weird stuff that happened, strange occurrences that could not be explained away by the corroboration of past lives. 

She was resolute. She and Harry would find a way. Perhaps, she thought as she walked through a nearly dry stream toward the river that would lead her to the back garden, she would mention that she had found a lost dog, taken it home, and met a local child. There was nothing suspect about that, and it was, after all, mostly the truth. 

Hermione knew that she should feel over the moon that she had been validated, among the stars that she had a friend of her own choosing. 

She should feel hope that her parents would believe Harry, if not her. And yet, she did not.

She only felt that this was another fight. This was another fight and she wasn’t really sure how to fight to win. To lose the one being on the planet who knew her truly, to lose the validation she had found after years of struggle, would be devastating. 

* * *

Hermione came home to find the kitchen in good order. Her father asked her to set the table, and so she did. They worked in companionable silence until her mother came home. They sat down to dinner, and and they had only just begun to eat when her parents asked her about her day. 

Her mother wanted details when Hermione mentioned only that she had taken a walk. Hermione felt so fed up that she finally asked, “Do you want details because of your personal interest, or because you feel that at some point I disassociated and you want to make sure any huge blocks of time aren’t missing? Not everything goes back to your perceptions of me.” 

“Hermione, I’m sorry you feel that I pathologize your life.” Her mother replied, repeating an old argument that they’d had many times over. “I will rephrase myself. Did you do anything interesting on your walk?”

“I found a lost dog, took it home, met a local family with a son about my age, came home.” Hermione admitted, “The dog was quite smart.” 

“Many animals really are.” Dad smiled. He was trying to diffuse a tense situation. It didn’t really help. Hermione wouldn’t know a single thing about keeping a pet, because they had never let her even experience it. 

Hermione said nothing and continued to eat. They were halfway through a silent and slightly strained meal, as was their daily experience, when Hermione heard the clop of hoofbeats. Inwardly, she sighed, knowing full well that it was no one but Harry. She looked to her father, knowing that she had to head him off at the pass, “May I be excused please?”

Her father shook his head. “You skipped lunch. Try and eat a bit more. I know the beans are a bit overdone, but you can have a sandwich or something else if you like.” 

Hermione stuck a fork in her food. Mum tilted her head. “How nice to live in the country, where people just take their horses out right past your gate.” 

Mum stood, excitement wreathing her face. “I’m going to go see the horse!” 

Dad agreed, and so they all traipsed to the door like suburban people who had never seen any sort of equine before. Hermione sighed, knowing that at least this way would get her away from the table. There had to be a plus side, Hermione reasoned, ignoring the voice in the back of her mind that was giddy at the idea of seeing Harry again. What girl didn’t want someone riding up to their front door to assure themselves of her welfare? 

Hermione shoved away a mental image of banners fluttering in a highland breeze. She heard the ringing of bells through the walls of a keep, heard someone shout in a thick accent, “Riders, ho!” 

Hermione hated that her mother was going to quickly lose that enjoyment in the face of yet more strangeness bringing itself to her front door. Yet, Hermione did not need to hear a soft command to the horse as she came to the front door to know who was dismounting in their garden. “Oh, what a beautiful horse.”

“I’m sorry to come so close to the house.” Harry lied, leading a very large horse closer to Mum so that she might look her fill, though Hermione knew her mother did not know that he had come up the front garden for a reason, “But Bilbo has a mind of his own sometimes.”

“You’re welcome to ride through anytime you like.” Having assured Harry of his welcome, Mum made some sort of noise, and the horse looked to his rider in question, as if to ask why he, a great big horse with feathery legs and imposing stance, was meant to be coo’d over by some idiot. Harry, patted the horse’s side. “Well, that’s very kind of—”

He faked a total look of such surprise that Hermione almost believed it. “Hermione? Is that you? I never did thank you for returning Pads today!”

Hermione stood on the stairs, next to her father who was looking over at her fondly. “All’s well that end’s well.” She crossed her arms over her midsection.

Harry made light work of explaining that Hermione had found his willful dog on a walk, and had brought him home. His whole family was very grateful, and her mother was utterly charmed by the young man with the horse. 

He reached into his saddle bag, and extended a book, making no move to step away from Bilbo. “You forgot your book.”

Hermione had done no such thing, but she left the stairs to approach him, knowing that they would not want the tome falling into anyone else’s hands. It was thick and heavy, clearly antique. 

 “Thank you.” She took the leather-bound book. It was written in Middle Cornish, and was a history of the area. Likely, it was the sort of thing that would detail the places and spaces in which they now lived. Hermione could not repress the genuine smile of thanks, “You were kind to think of me.”

Harry inclined his head, earning a nudge from his horse that he withstood, “It was not kindness, Hermione. It was curiosity, something I think you understand far better than mere social nicety.” 

Hermione reminded him, “Curiousity kills cats, Harry.”

He shrugged, all boyish charm. “I’m not a cat.”

“No, you are an—” Hermione hissed on an indrawn breath, having drawn the attention of her parents and the giant horse. Bilbo dropped his head, and proceeded to nibble at her hair. He was broad of shoulder and had a powerful neck and large head, but Hermione realized he was a softie in need of a cuddle. 

Harry chuckled, totally unaware that giving him a telling off would land her in hot water for being unsociable. Hermione realized how much of her life was so controlled by what ought to be that she was unable to let herself accept what was. 

Hermione reached up and patted him, “No, I’m not ignoring you. You’re beautiful and you know it.” He really was, a beautiful brown with white feathers. He had great big eyes and a face that just seemed to smile. 

Bilbo accepted her pats gladly. She glanced at Harry who held his horse’s bridle. “Why Bilbo?”

He smiled, “He’s a Shire horse.”

Bilbo came from the Shire. “Clever.”

Hermione ran her hand along Bilbo. He was a heavy horse, clearly weighing about a ton. Even so, he was completely completely respecting of her diminutive stature. Hermione loved him instantly, and she rather fancied that her affection was returned. His muscles ripped under his gleaming coat as she petted him. 

Bilbo let out a heavy breath over the leather cover. Mum reached for the book, “If you’re going to play with the horse, do give me the book.” 

Hermione went to say that he would ignore it in a moment, but Mum had already caught sight of the embossed title. She looked quickly to Hermione, stepping back from Bilbo as though she had just realized he was taller at his neck than even she was in her heels. “Have you been reading other languages again?”

“No, I haven’t.” Hermione assured her, “This one was a gift, and I couldn’t very well…”

“Hermione, you know the doctors have encouraged you to read in English!” Mum dropped her voice, but Hermione knew Harry heard her still. Though they were largely separated by the horse, his bulk did not to break the flow of sound waves. 

 Mum looked back to Harry, “It was very kind of you to try and give Hermione a gift. I’m not sure how her linguistical abilities came up, but she is unable, regrettably, to accept your gift.”

Harry looked so confused. And then, the shutters came down behind his eyes, and she knew instinctively that he was angry on her behalf. “If she is fluent in the language, I don’t think her unable to put the text to good use, Mrs…”

“Dr. Granger.” Mum supplied, “No recompense is needed for a neighborly task. She’s said she was happy to return your dog.” She extended the book, coming to where Harry was standing, “Do please keep your book.”

“Ma’am, respectfully, I think restricting her reading material is reprehensible.” Harry declared, taking the book and putting it in his saddle bag once more, though the ferocity of his gaze did not waver, “It is base, and if you knew what I know, you would consider it the worst affront against her amongst many.”

Harry adjusted Bilbo’s saddle. He was clearly ignoring her mother. Hermione wished she had that option. She stepped back, and inadvertently stumbled. She righted herself carefully. Harry glanced behind him to assure himself that she was still standing, and clearly that said enough. 

“And what is it that you know?” Mum asked, “Having only met this morning, I hardly find your commentary overly informed or respectful towards an adult.” 

“She has told me nothing.” Harry assured her mother, “I know genius when I see it.” 

Mum’s lips pursed when it became clearly that no apology was going to come her way. 

He sighed, and turned his Hermione, nudging his horse gently. “I’m so sorry, Hermione. Truly I am, only I suppose I was so happy to find you, so enthusiastic to find someone like me, that I forgot not all people are innately accepting.” He was remorse personified, “I should have, in spite of my worry for you, respected you enough to listen.” 

“It’s nothing.” She absolved him, “None of this is your fault. It just is, Harry.”

He put a foot in the stirrup and prepared to lift himself onto Bilbo’s back. “Not for long. That I promise you.”

It was only when her father cleared his throat behind them that Hermione realized they had been speaking Pictish. How Harry remembered the language was beyond her, but Hermione knew herself well enough to know that she only needed to hear a language her soul had once learned for it to come back, even if she could not remember the incarnations that had taught her language. 

Clearly, from the look on his face, Harry hadn’t noticed himself switching languages. Hermione empathized. She did it unknowingly when stressed. She reassured him in English, his face awash in hastily concealed fear. “It’s really okay.” 

She looked to her parents, “That was Pictish. He was just saying goodbye.” 

“Sounded like a lot more than goodbye to me.” Her father wasn't angry, but he was concerned. “As you two have so much to say to one another, you’re both welcome to come inside and say it to one another.” 

“He can’t leave his horse unattended, and really, dinner’s likely cold.” Hermione replied, suddenly wishing with every fiber of her being that there was some way to explain this, that he could come inside, and not leave her to watch her parent’s faces crumble in fear for their child. 

“Hermione,” Harry dropped his voice, not that her parents would have been able to understand the Latin he directed her way, “Do you want me to stay?”

Hermione let herself nod, not able to deny herself this truth as she had denied so very many others. It was the only answer Harry needed. 

“Do you have a phone hooked up?” Harry looked to her parents in perfectly natural English, “I’ll call my parents.” 

Her mother arched an eyebrow, “And Bilbo?” 

“He’s a puppy.” Harry dismounted and patted his horse, “He’ll hang round the garden. There doesn’t look to be anything poisonous here, even if he did wander, which he won’t.”

Hermione watched as Harry ground tied Bilbo, leaving him to know that while his reins were dropped in this fashion that he was to wait until Harry returned to him. She didn’t ask for permission to take him to the phone table, where the heavy phone sat on the little table with the chair nearby. 

“Cool phone.” Harry said, picking up the receiver of the Post-War machine. 

“It’s the only sort I don’t accidentally fry somehow.” Hermione admitted, as Harry dialed his number. “Weird things just happen, you know? Exploding lightbulbs, books just landing in my lap, fixing things randomly. I never know why.”

Harry dropped the receiver, staring at her in wonder and shock. The handset dangled between them, the long cord straightening under its weight. “You don’t know what that means, do you?”

“How could I possibly?” Hermione returned, “Now isn’t the time, Harry.” 

A voice was calling out down the line, and Harry tore his gaze away from her to reach for the receiver with shaking hands. Swallowing, he grasped it. 

He looked back towards the front door quickly, and spoke, “Papa, I need you and Dad to come as soon as you can. I’ve already annoyed Hermione’s parents.” 

The line went dead, and within ten seconds, there were two men standing in her living room.

Hermione gasped as a loud crack echoed around them. 

Harry groaned. “I swear I can explain, Hermione.”

He glared at the two men. The sandy haired one she had not met sighed, “I told you he meant to come in the muggle fashion.” 

The one she’d met before arched an eyebrow, “Excuse me, Moons, but when one’s child says that they need you right now, you do not wait to find the car keys.” 

The dark haired and laconic man straightened his shirt, and Hermione saw the glint of a circular pendant around his neck, on a delicate chain. She knew what it was, instantly. 

How could a man be a dog? How could two men travel through space and time to land in her living room? Why was Harry scolding them? 

He hissed, “Her parents could have been in the room! Don’t you stop and think?”

Hermione made a broken sound that had them looking her way. Suddenly, it was all so clear to her. She could see it from the very start, the very moment they had set foot in Cornwall. 

“I’ve had a psychotic break.” Hermione’s eyes welled with tears, “I’ve made you up. You’re a figment of my imagination, no one else can see you, and that’s why—”

She was not going to say that the fact she’d made him up explained their affinity. She was not going to shame herself even to herself, not to that degree. He liked her, filled the broken parts of her, because he was the manifestation of a brief psychotic episode, brought on by the stress of moving. 

Everything fit, the way he showed up when she was stressed, the way they argued, the way she loved him so. She was even factoring her parents into these delusions. She bet if she went and looked, they’d still be at the dining room table. Hermione did not want to go look. 

The room stilled, and Harry ventured. His gaze had softened, and there was a gentleness in his voice that drove her further to tears, “Hermione?”

“Oh my God.” Hermione felt her heart literally ripping in half, “You’re a hallucination.” 

“You see something like this and the first thing you think is that you’ve lost the plot?” Harry asked, “No, Hermione, no.”

“What else could you be?” Hermione cried, tears dripping down her face. “I missed you so much that I made you up. I know what we had was real. I know. No one will ever take my memories from me.” Hermione had to face the truth, “But I guess you’re not here now, and I’ve lost the separation between…” 

“Listen to me.” Harry demanded, softly and firmly, “You’re a witch, that’s all. You’re magical. It’s that simple. I’m here and I’m real, and you’re here, and you’re safe, and nothing will change that, nothing, not ever.” 

And then, Harry was holding her, explaining gently about magic and how things would and did make sense, and that he was so sorry that she’d found out this way. He went on about magic being in her veins, and how she would go to school and study it, and she would soon remember it. 

Hermione shook against him, terror coursing through her. This was going to be the last time he held her. She had to let him go. She had to let go, and move on, and let the past be the past, and get the help she needed to make that happen. “You don’t have to let go, not ever. Merlin, I thought waiting for you was bad, Hermione, but what you have suffered is untenable, and I am so sorry.”

He repeated the same phrase over and over in languages long forgotten, spilling from his lips in a litany, as he brushed her hair back from her flushed and tearstained face. Hermione shook in his arms, as he told her stories of the pasts their souls had shared, languages blending like the fabric of time. 

She wanted so desperately to trust him, to trust that the men in the room who were trying desperately not to stare were real. She wanted so desperately to know that she was magical in her soul, but that truth didn’t resonate. No part of her brain lit up with knowing. There was just nothing there. 

All around her, the glass in the room shattered. She just couldn’t help the wave of emotion that burned through her veins, the rush of heat banishing her fear and her tears. Her mother’s beautiful china shattered in the boxes by the door, the shards flying their way. Hermione screamed, and tried in vain to shove Harry down, but it never hit them.

There was a barrier there, and all of the shrapnel hit the floor in a dead halt. 

Hermione looked in that direction, and saw her parents standing in the doorway, having clearly been drawn forth at some point. Clearly, by the looks on their faces, they had seen the entire thing. Padfoot, who was surely not Padfoot, because if it was a strange name for a dog then clearly did not suit a man, waved a wooden stick, and reassembled the dishes.

Hermione swallowed. She had broken the dishes. If magic fixed them, then logically, magic had broken them. 

She did not need her memories to trust what she understood and accepted. She was a witch. 

Dad cleared his throat, “Tea, anyone? It seems we ought to be having a chat.” 


	2. Life, strife—those two are one. Naught can ye win but by faith and daring! On, on—that ye have done. But for the work of today preparing.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [March of the Women.](http://www.sandscapepublications.com/intouch/marchwords.html) It can be heard [here.](https://vimeo.com/109623197)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> American [Suffragist songs!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqPiFXux1Ig)

Hermione was fine with letting Remus and Sirius explain the whole situation, for it was clear that they were in possession of facts and contextual information that she did not possess. She really did not have a clue, for the first time in her life, what she might say.

She would hold off on her own questions until it seemed as though they had said their piece. They had been explaining magic and what it meant to be magical for a good twenty minutes when when Remus came to the crux of the matter, “This general understanding of magic leads me to a more specific exploration of Hermione’s own situation. In some cases, a person’s magic is specialized, such as is the case with mages and others. Have ever heard the term lightworkers?”

Mum and Dad revealed that they had not, nor had Hermione. Remus thereby explained, “Lightworkers reincarnate in order to bring about massive and sweeping changes in our community, often pushing us toward greater good and ridding us of evil. In doing so, they balance magic, purify it, and send it back to Source. In the process of their own growth, they bring us closer to our own enlightenment.” 

Mum made some sort of sound that conveyed her disbelief. It sounded like something out of _Star Wars_ , or a new age book found in some bookshop in London that smelled thickly of incense so as to cover up the burning of other herbs. And yet, Hermione knew it to be true. 

She knew in her soul that she and Harry balanced one another out on a broader level that transcended personality. It didn’t mean that they wouldn’t fight, wouldn’t have and didn’t have rough spots. She thought he was arrogant and too forthright. She knew he thought her swotty and shy. 

What it did mean, however, was that between them there was a balance that Hermione felt, sitting next to him. They were equals, partners, in a world full of people who seemed out of step with them. Hermione felt safe, understood, and respected by and with Harry. It went so deep that she knew in her heart that they had been working together since the dawn of time. It was, she supposed, being a bit like old friends from the second of their meeting.

Sirius continued, “These people are recorded through the annals of history, magical and muggle. Some confirmed examples include that of William and Matilda, Merlin and Arthur, Adam and Eve, among many others.” 

Hermione could not lay claim to a knowing of most of those incarnations, though Matilda of Scotland and the vision she’d had just days ago was vivid in her mind, even now. Had she been asked, she could have thrown out other names, other incarnations, that she had pieced together. She held her tongue, deciding then and there, in that moment, that these things belonged to her and to Harry. 

Their pasts belonged to them, as did their futures. No longer was she going to try to justify her knowledge to her parents. If they asked, she would communicate what she knew, but she knew now that the truths she held within her were her own. She didn’t need anyone to validate or approve of her knowing, so long as she herself trusted it. 

“Who confirmed these existences as examples of…” Dad searched for the term, “Light working?”

Sirius and Remus both opened their mouths and drew a breath, but it was not them who confidently and calmly addressed her father. It was not them who placed their credibility, their truths, in front of her parents for their consideration and for their possible derision. 

Harry did that, not for himself, but for her. 

“I did.” Harry affirmed, “It was simple enough to cross-check historical records in some cases. In others, I just knew.”

Hermione thought her parents would object to this verification as unscientific. After all, Harry had a bias. Her parents were researchers, who appreciated things like double blind studies and independent verification. 

“And, are there others living today who…?” Mum asked, seemingly at a loss. 

Hermione was surprised that they did not vehemently object to Harry’s words. She knew it was too soon to take silence as acceptance, but Hermione’s heart skipped a beat in hopefulness. 

Hermione spoke then, knowing this truth in the pit of her soul and the depth of her heart. “Mum, there’s only the two of us. There’s a reason I’m largely always female, and Harry himself generally chooses to be male. I can’t explain it, but there is a balance between us that would be messed up if there were others like us. We’re not very alike, but we…” 

She broke off, unwilling to be so bold as to say as though they understood one another. What if Harry did not understand her or resonate with her? Evidently, though, he did because he slanted a glance her way and boldly asserted himself, “In every incarnation I can remember, Hermione’s soul has pushed me to do what I had to do, and was the strength I leaned upon. Even when we chose lives full of adversarial conflict, her soul has illuminated what we are called to do, universally.”

Hermione saw in her mind’s eye, flashes of a hundred lives, maybe more, wherein their clasped hands had changed history. She saw the very first time they had incarnated, tasked with balancing magic in a world that was now going to be divided between those who had magic and those who did not, though of course in those days they had all lived openly. People thought The Fall was about sin, but really, it was an allegory to explain magic. 

They had, in those moments, made the conscious choice to stand together. It was clear that sitting at this table they had each made that choice again, and would be given chances to keep making it util they died. Under the table, Hermione turned her palm upwards, open. It was an offering, a choice, a question. 

Harry answered it, sliding his hand into hers. Hermione felt what she knew now to be her magic building in her palm between them, until an electric shock passed gently between them, like a breaker that had been turned on again after ages of dormancy. It was not only her magic, she realized, but his, too. It did not feel alien to her, rather like a double-pole circuit breaker. 

She was glad that they had chosen this moment to affirm their choice to walk this path together as far as it would take them, because she knew that her soul would remember it for always, even when it was long forgotten by her mind. 

She smiled at Harry, and he smiled back. No one needed to know that their hands were intertwined. It was enough that they knew, and that they were facing this moment together. 

“What you must understand, Dr. Granger, is that these souls are not run of the mill souls.” Remus tried again. Hermione didn’t know why he was called Moony, but Hermione thought him to be the more sensible of Harry’s parents. Perhaps she was still a bit annoyed at having not realized that Sirius was an animagus. “They—”

Dad clearly had a question that could not wait, for it flew from his mouth as quickly as he might form the words, “Do you mean to try and tell me that my daughter is some kind of deity amongst your people?”

Hermione couldn’t help it. She giggled. 

Her parents evidently took this as confirmation and not derision, because they were slack-jawed when Sirius interjected, “Hardly. It wouldn’t do to broadcast their abilities, and even if we did, their higher selves, the bit of their subconscious mind that connects their consciousness to the eternity of Truth, would never allow it. They’ve missions in life, and they have come to complete them.”

The truth of those words resounded in Hermione’s soul. She did not want to be famous. Even now, she knew she wanted to help people. She wasn’t keen on being popular or famous. She only wanted to be understood. No matter what she might have once been, she knew now that she was very much a young girl figuring out the world. 

“For now…” Remus continued on, “They are children, and children they will remain for as long as it is possible. Naturally, Harry is a bit of an odd child.”

“Thank you.” Harry deadpanned, not letting go of her hand as he used his left hand to pick up his glass. 

Hermione was so glad to find that he accepted himself and the things he liked as much as she accepted herself. She knew very well that he could not accept her as she was if he could not accept himself. She was glad, again, to find them equals, even in this. 

“He wanted archery lessons to go along with his pony for his third birthday.” Hermione felt the callouses on his palm in new ways as Sirius spoke. Clearly, the archery lessons had commenced at one point or another. 

Sirius continued, “His sixth, he declared his intention to joust. We compromised on polo and bought him a plow.” 

Harry was quite emphatic as he looked to her, almost as if he was asking her for permission or promising her that the argument was not yet settled, “I’m still going to joust.”

Remus leveled a glance at his son across the table, full of sass. “Not while there are things called parental consent forms.”

Harry sighed, and the sobered enough to return to the topic at hand, “What we need for focus on here is what this means for Hermione and me.” Addressing her solely, he added, “I think that what we ought to do is come to an understanding of what putting all of our cards on the table means for us.”

Hermione agreed. “I think we ought to make some time to sit down and compare notes.” Hermione thought it would be amazing, just to know that he too remembered the very things she remembered. She didn’t feel alone anymore, and she wanted to affirm that in the only way that seemed sensible. 

“Yeah.” Harry agreed, “We should probably work anything else out later…” He seemed to want to say something more, but Hermione understood by the way his gaze lost focus on everything but her face that he was having a vision. It was easy to spot in him, after having so many of her own. 

She resisted the urge to lean into him. Almost as if his soul was calling out to hers, her mind’s eye showed her a single second in time. She felt it more than saw it. Again, she was older, in a room in a round tower somewhere, red hangings on a bed. There was a fire in the grate, and Harry’s body was cradled against hers, his head on her jumper-clad chest, as she ran her fingers through his hair and whispered words of gentle praise that she could not discern. 

As soon as it had risen to the fore, it was gone.  Hermione took the focus off of them, knowing that Harry would surface soon. “There’s a lot we’re going to figure out. I know the whole magical thing is a lot to understand, but I know it’s true.”

Harry surfaced with a soft jolt against her. While her parents expressed their regret for never being able to even consider psychic ability, even if not one of them had considered magic, Hermione looked at them and at Harry, and knew that there was nothing to forgive. 

She had struggled, sure and yeah over the years, but she was aware that everything had led to this moment. She was also aware that years of talk therapy had only benefited her, in that she understood herself and knew how to assess situations and engage in coping skills.

She would trade those traits for nothing, because she had earned them, worked for them, developed them. She knew that otherwise, her people skills would be poor, and the fact that she worked for them when everyone had said she would be unable to connect with others was something she celebrated. 

* * *

 

After that, there seemed to be little to say that would not be better said later. They all needed time to process privately. Hermione wanted to talk to Harry, and she knew that the adults wanted to talk about things that they felt too sensitive for young ears. Normally, this would have annoyed Hermione, but now she was merely glad that it was an excuse to leave the table. 

And so, they left their parents to process and went on a walk. Hermione was eager to be shown around Rowan Hill, having really only seen the drive and the dining room, and walked purposefully alongside Harry as he showed her into the barn, down a gentle slope away from the house. It was a stone structure that smelled richly of straw, feed, and animal life. The horse stalls were empty, as it was the middle of the day. Harry gestured gently to the tack room and to the back that housed various vehicles suitable for horse drawn use, explaining in some detail about each. 

What Hermione knew about farming could fit on an index card, but she loved the barn. It was large and spacious, but cosy, with its loft and its charming windows. There was a feed room, and a washing stall, and yet more spaces for animals that were not horses. There was a nameplate on each stall, and Hermione came to the general impression that Harry spent more time here than anywhere else. 

 Outside, in an adjacent pasture, saw a structure that Harry called jokingly, the hen caravan, meaning that it was a movable coop suited to housing the mostly free ranging hens. She did note that there were a few goats hanging around with the chickens in the nearby pasture. Harry named the does, from where they stood by the wooden fence. “Katherine, Jane, Anne, Kitty, and Cathy.” 

He grinned, when he noticed that she had understood that those goats were named for Henry VIII’s various wives. “Of course, those two are named Mary and Bessie, right?” 

“Sure.” Harry allowed, patting the goats who came his way easily. “The buck’s name is Tudor, in case you’re wondering.”

Hermione accepted this information, knowing that it was only sensible, if adorably thematic. “May his dynasty be strong.” The goat in question ripped up some grass, and chewed, his gaze upon her as green-tinged saliva dribbled from his mouth.

“Well, he’s as popular with his ladies as Henry was towards the end of his life.” Harry gestured, “Which is to say not very.” 

They walked along, passing a beehive that made Hermione inch closer to Harry, and various bushes that produced fruits. There were raised bed gardens, there. The only thing she could confidently identify were the strawberries. Harry noticed her consideration of the strawberries and pulled a few off of the bush. He ate one directly, and offered her another. “It’s a bit early, but this plant’s always been that way.” 

Hermione ate it, and let the flavor rest in her mouth before swallowing. “It’s good. This garden is pretty extensive…” She looked beyond the raised bed and saw a relatively sizable rectangle plot. It housed many crops, how many and what she could not tell at this point in June. 

Harry shrugged, coloring under her praise, faint though she thought it was in comparison to what she was actually thinking and feeling. “Neville’s the real herbologist. You should see his greenhouses. Course he doesn’t do much with them, yet.” 

“Herbology?” Hermione sought clarification, “Magical botany?” 

Harry affirmed her connection, adding, “There are some differences, but that’s a workable definition. My friend Ron’s Mum makes stuff with the crops. I’ve tried, but I can’t figure out that whole angle, beyond Papa and Dad’s repertoire of food, and Kreacher’s cooking. So most of what I grow goes to food banks.” 

Hermione was glad to have touched upon a topic about which she knew a great deal. “All these governmental cuts to food banks are horrible. And then, when people do get food, it’s a box of biscuits and a tin of diced tomatoes. Who can make a balanced meal out of those?” 

Hermione frequently volunteered at the food back back in Crawley, mostly because it was one thing that she had decided to do for herself. She liked to cook and to bake and she liked knowing that her small efforts helped people. Nobody made her feel like a freak at the food bank for packing boxes and helping people to find their orders each week. 

 They continued to converse in like fashion, wherein Hermione was happy to expound upon her views of social justice and how food was entirely fundamental to a person’s wellbeing, and that the cuts to food benefits and food banks made no sense. She railed against government austerity and the suffering of poverty. It was something she felt very passionately about, and was glad to know that Harry agreed. She was further happy to know that he seemed to enjoy her decided opinions and expressions thereof. 

Eventually came to the turnout pasture for the horses. Harry explained that while Bilbo was largely his horse aforementioned equine and three other heavy horses, all Shires, were kept for plowing and other farm work, not that the whole farm was active. Hermione did not ask, but she knew that rankled Harry. 

 And of course, Harry kept his polo horse, Ginger, and two other horses for riding, Cooper and Maggie, though Hermione did not understand the various distinctions he quickly made between breeds. 

They were walking through the pasture so as to find the horses, when Hermione ventured, “Your parents have something of a menagerie.” 

Harry admitted, “Somewhat reluctantly, yes. So as long as I do the bulk of my chores, they’re happy to employ Kreacher to keep things going and look the other way when I bring another animal home.” He paused, “You see, Hermione, my parents have zero intentions of being gentleman farmers.”

This explained both why the acreage around them was rented out, and also why Harry was expected to do the barn chores he could do. Hermione also thought that small statement revealed much about Harry’s hopes and dreams, “But you do?”

“Yes. I don’t really know why beyond that it makes me happy.” Harry admitted. 

He seemed almost sheepish about his happiness, and that was one thing Hermione would never stand for, never, not ever. If he found joy in something, she would never let him be ashamed of it. 

“There doesn’t need to be another reason, does there?” Hermione asked, challenging his internalized perceptions. Years of talk therapy helped in this if nothing else. It was not for her to answer these questions, but Hermione hoped that Harry knew that the secrets of his heart were safe with her.  

Harry shook his head, “I found a  bit of parchment when I was digging through the archives at the Library of Alexandria that said all Robert the Bruce wanted to do was retire into obscurity and farm. It merely confirmed what I knew I wanted for myself, in some strange way.” He shrugged, “Robert died with that a pipe dream. There is no obscurity for kings, nor retirement. I am not a king, but some part of me would still quite like to be a farmer.”

Hermione understood this. She was no longer living the lives she once had, and yet she liked fiber arts, found cooking and baking to be instinctive and relaxing tasks, and did not particularly care what others thought. She worried sometimes that such hobbies presented a very gendered orientation of herself, but she knew herself to be a feminist. She knew that these things were not lesser than other tasks, and she did not enjoy them at the exclusion of other things. 

“If it makes you happy, you should devote yourself to it.” Hermione told him, “If you know what you want, you shouldn’t let anything stop you.”

Harry loped down a small hill beside her, and Hermione saw the horses in the distance, “It’s a bit of a weird hobby for a ten year old kid.”

“Harry.” Hermione insisted, the sun bright above them, as bright as the certainty in her eyes, “I’ve lived for years worrying about what people think, and I’m not going to do it anymore. I won’t let you, either.”

Harry’s touch on her arm was genuine. “Thanks.” 

They walked through the pasture in relative silence for a long moment, until Hermione asked, “What do you think my parents think?”

“I think they’re probably questioning a lot of the things they’ve done.” Harry’s suppositions concurred with her own, not that she was particularly happy about this truth, “I’m not asking you to tell me, but I hope you know that you can.”

Hermione responded in the only way that felt right. She wasn’t going to let him doubt what he knew, and she wasn’t going to let herself cast doubt on her own truths. She’d promised him, promised them both that they would live them, and this was the first, step. “You too, but I think you know that already.”

“Yeah.” Harry promised, ambling through a ditch, offering her an arm she did not need but took anyway. Her magic felt focused when thy touched. “My parents were brutally murdered when I was one, defending me from a madman who has it out for me. They say he’s dead and gone, but I sometimes wonder.”

Hermione swallowed, proceeding over the ditch with a quick hop. “Really?”

“Yeah, just idle thoughts.” Harry’s gaze was far off and she knew that he was thinking of those parents and the fact that those who loved them, throughout history, often met brutal and bloody ends, “I’d be happy to be wrong, to live out my life in relative obscurity at Rowan Hill, to just be ignored.”

Hermione reflected on what she had gathered from his parents, “I get the sense that you’re a notable figure already.”

“Again, entirely reluctantly.” He seemed uncomfortable talking about himself. At least Hermione thought so, because he changed the subject, asking, “And you? What are Hermione Jane Granger’s deeply held ambitions?”

“I’d like to write, I think.” Hermione revealed, “Governance is important to me, but somehow I feel like it’s advocacy I’d like more. I don’t want to be anything remotely like a Queen, ever again. I find the idea of power abhorrent.”

Harry’s response was sober, factual. Hermione refused to call his words a premonition, “And thus, you will wield it.”

“What?” She balked, not sure she liked this fact, but knew that she would accept it if he said it came from that place within himself that was connected to Truth. After all, it was she who made the choices for her life, and just because something was a future option at this time didn’t mean it would always be one or that it would certainly happen. 

Harry lowered the lead rope off of his shoulder, and began to check the buckles as they walked. “They say that the person least desirous of power is the one destined to wield it.”

Hermione felt inward relief course through her body. He was making a philosophical observation. Those she would readily accept. Her mouth twisted in a wry smile, “Who are they, really?”

Harry’s response was breezy, “Likely some sadists somewhere who manufacture sayings to haunt people and rain on their parades.”

“Maybe.” Hermione gave in to her brain’s urgings and asked the question that had been none too patiently waiting its turn, “So, are you going to tell me about the Library of Alexandria? Did you know that non-magical people are told that it burned down in 48 BCE.”

“That’s when wizards hid it from Caesar when he set fire to his own ships.” Harry noted, “Did you know the Shire horse nearly died out in the 50s and 60s?” 

He glanced at her, a smile tugging on his lips as she huffed, “No? Oh, well, then…”

Hermione could not help reverting to English from the easy exchange they’d been having in Gaeilge Chlasaiceach, or Classical Irish that had given way to modern dialects centuries ago, to demand, “Harry!” 

 When he caught sight of her pleading look, he stopped teasing and told her in great length about his trip and the archives there. He talked and they talked, and talked, and she talked, all the while Harry showed her how to properly groom  horses, and how to give them peppermints with her palm firmly flattened. 

Though she was very little help, he didn’t seem to mind. It was nice, just to have a friend who enjoyed the things she enjoyed. It was also quite nice to be around Harry, whom she would freely admit to missing, and to be around animals, something she had long wanted. 

In fact, she would never tell anyone which she found nicer. Like most girls upon their first meeting of horses, at least in all the novels she had read about horse mad girls, Hermione was rather certain that she too would have picked the horses over the boy. Luckily for her, though, they were a package deal. 

When her parents called out for her to come to the car, Hermione left Harry at the door of the barn. She realized later, much later, in showing her around Rowan Hill, that he was telling her things about himself and the person he was that he would never put into words. 

* * *

Over the next few weeks, Hermione was cognizant of changes in her parents. Books about brain pathology and psychology were shoved aside on the bookcases to include books about reincarnation, Indigo Children, and copies of _Managing Your Muggleborn,_ one of the few magically produced books that mundane people could read. 

Had that been the only thing that changed, Hermione would have paid it no mind. She too, was reading anything she could get her hands on. She had quizzed Sirius, Remus, and Harry, to the point that they were likely frustrated, though she privately thought Harry bemused, even when he demanded they talk about anything else. For more relevant information, she sent off a letter to Hogwarts, and to Harry’s honorary grandmother, Deputy Head Professor McGonagall. The letters she received were nothing short of wonderful. 

Her parents were researching. It was decidedly not wonderful. Anything they could read about Robert the Bruce, and more specifically Isabella of Mar, they read. Anything they could read about the people she knew she had been they read, once they figured out periods of time in which they ought to focus. Hermione came home from Rowan Hill to find them staring weepingly, and creepily, at death certificates. Mum bawled when her contact at the University archives sent photographs of one or two of her more modern incarnations. 

Hermione did her best to keep them focused on current events, even if she did pour over the documents with Harry when they were alone during the day. Her parents, however, had gone a bit barmy with the need to collect information. Books and documents arrived day by day. Hermione refused to go when they told her they’d found a very reputable psychic to meet. 

 Anything they could read about reincarnation and historical periods they’d mention was the things they were actively reading as a couple. They made notes and left them for each other under coffee mugs in the mornings, for in this fashion they covered twice the ground. It seemed as though they had formed a book club. 

Books, she understood. Archival documents, she accepted. The records of historical music were a little bit weird, but she did enjoy them, so she said nothing as her mother wondered to her father if perhaps they should perhaps subscribe to ethnomusicology newsletters and journals. The day they looked fretfully at her box of Belgian waffles and asked her very carefully if she would prefer some other food suited to her palate was the day all of Hermione’s choice to look the other way evaporated. Hermione very determinedly toasted two of the aforementioned waffles, smothered them in Nutella, and stared them down as she chewed. 

Later that same day, Hermione ate a handful of Every Flavor Beans as she and Harry ambled into the garden just after dinnertime. Harry expertly stopped Cooper, who was a lovely bay color. Harry went on and on about him, but all Hermione remembered was what she knew, that he was a gentle sort of fellow, whom Sirius occasionally rode, though he had no real talent for equitation. 

Hermione folded up the top of the bag of beans, and jumped down. From the footboards between them, she picked up her current box of reading materials. “You really didn’t have to bring me home.”

Wizarding people largely used horsepower to travel between their homes. There were several wizarding farms in the area, and they formed something of a small wizarding outpost. Harry, being as horse mad as he was, took to anything having to do with horses unashamedly and quickly. He had his eye on both a new broom and a new pony cart for his birthday. 

Harry shoved his glasses up his face as he finished settling Cooper by the hitching post that Remus had magically installed in the back garden. This was a discussion they’d had several times, with Harry always standing his ground, and Hermione agreeing in a way that made it look like she was capitulating, but really all she was doing was reminding him that he wasn’t obligated. It was nice that he chose her company, and she wasn’t about to refuse his. 

She cut him off, “The Beast of Bodmin wouldn’t eat me. The hair’s a deterrent.” She nodded sagely and patted Cooper good-night. 

Harry gave Cooper a word of reassurance and went to take the box she was carrying. He sighed when she did not pass it over, “Just to be on the safe side, I’ll walk you to the door. It’s afraid of groups of two.” 

Hermione ducked her head to avoid smiling in the fading light. When they came to the front door, all of their easy banter faded. Clearly, even through the door and walls, they could hear a documentarian droning on, “Suffragettes were often criticized for inciting violence…”

Hermione groaned, and ground her teeth together with a clack. She could not hold back the Anglo-Norman that accompanied her ground out words, “They’ve been like this for weeks!”

Harry looked faintly flummoxed, “Still?” 

Hermione ranted, “This morning, they asked me if I wanted something more suited to my palate! Who doesn’t like Belgian waffles?” She set her box of books down on a chair, “We need a plan.”

“A plan?” Harry repeated.

“Something that shocks them into modernity. Something that shakes them out of this little historical road trip they’ve been embarked upon. It is the twentieth century, and I for one would like to live in it.” Hermione decided, “Yes, a plan.”

“How about, ‘Oi, Mum! Oi, Dad! Stop worrying about dead people.” Harry ventured, even his English vernacular sounding correct to her ears, even in ancient forms of French. “No, your parents like research. Maybe you should give them something more relevant to research?” 

Hermione clapped her hands together in thought, “Do you suppose they’d like a book about the seaside?”

“In other words, you’ve had enough and need a day at the beach.” Harry summarized. 

“Maybe the sea air will knock some sense into them.” Hermione concluded. 

It was easy enough to march inside, look pointedly at the telly, and babble on about going to the beach. Harry dropped one or two hints about Mawgan Porth, and the next they knew Mum was on the phone to Rowan Hill. Within ten minutes, Harry was on his way home with the promise of a day at the beach hanging between them. 

It wasn’t perfect, but Hermione was altogether glad just to slather herself in sunblock, don a floppy hat over her light, long-sleeved top and capris and slides, and pretend she did not see her parents reading as though they were revising for first in history from Oriel. They were, it seemed,  navigating their way through history chronologically, and were working on the Suffragette movement. 

Hermione thought that throwing bricks through the townhouse window of her childhood friend’s father had been easier than coping with the present day reality of her parents torturing themselves with the imagery of brutal force feedings and untold horrors that women had suffered in their journey toward the vote. At least as a suffragette, Hermione had been certain of her calling. Insofar as her parents, she was certain of nothing. 

Her parents brought their research to the beach.

Were she not a respecter of books and a steward of the environment, she would have chucked their books and notes into the sea. As it was, she and Harry beach combed and ignored, if for the day, her parents and their strange obsession with dead people.

For his part, Harry very determinedly did not laugh at the big black dog that wandered the beach as though he owned the place and hammed it up for the tourists with toddlers. Sirius really was good with the little kids. 

Collecting a shell and putting it into the bucket they were sharing, Hermione tried to force off the bit of information that came her way. She was desperately trying to force away the image of Sirius and Remus crowding over the incubator of a sandy haired baby. The vision version of Remus looked to a young man Hermione could not see but knew to be standing next to her in this vision, “What do you think of your brother, Prongslet?” 

Hermione could barely haul air into her lungs as the vision faded. She felt as though she had been punched. She looked directly at a romping Sirius, and then back at Harry. Why had she had that vision? 

Harry knew well the look on her face, and asked, “What?”

“I shouldn’t say.” Hermione decided then and there that she was not going to share this bit of insight. There were just some things a person did not predict. Health conditions were one of them. She wasn’t a bloody doctor. 

“Hermione.” Harry insisted, “Do you remember what happened to that girl whose parents shipped her off to an abbey to take the veil in the footsteps of her sister?”

Hermione huffed. “This is not at all the same thing as staging an insurrection over an unfair Abbess.” 

Her rational mind told her that her soul had been perfectly justified in getting herself sent to the abbey in order to bust her poor sister out of the place, no matter the teasing she got over it now. She had done what she’d set out to do, and that’s what mattered, even almost 700 years later.

“Ah, but if she had told her dearly departed gentleman caller what she was planning, he might not have ridden hell for leather clean across Scotland and Wales thinking himself a bigamist and damned entirely to hell.”

“It was over 700 years ago, would you please move forward?” Hermione snapped, “One does what one must for one’s siblings. You’ll know soon enough.”

She clapped a hand over her mouth as Harry gaped. “Hermione?”

She spoke behind her hand, “You’re going to have a little brother…” The firm press was not entirely successful at muffling her voice. Harry pulled it gently away from her mouth, leaving Hermione to blurt, “Within eight years, don’t ask me anything more, I don’t know and I don’t want to know.”

“You know…” Harry mused, after a long silence in which Hermione was certain he’d had a stroke, “Aside from you, all I’ve ever wanted out of life is a sibling.”

“Well, don’t say  anything in case you jinx it.” Hermione needlessly reminded him, “We can’t interfere.”

Harry grinned and zipped his lips comically. 

Hermione shoved to her feet and brushed the sand off of her capri-covered legs. “Better you than me. Can you imagine my parents with a baby?” 

Unlike Harry, she most definitely not did want a sibling. She had enough cousins, Millie and her little sister Ellie, from her mother’s sister, and Mary Frances and Patrick from her mother’s brother. If growing up amongst them had taught her anything, its was that sharing your parents was probably pretty tough. She wasn’t going to rain on Harry’s parade, though. Mary Frances was strangely dull, so that skewed her viewpoint. 

Harry cracked up with laughter. “There’s not enough books in all the universe for that to happen.” He absolutely howled with laughter, “They’d read every book and then create collated reports on how to change a nappy.”

Hermione’s blood boiled. How dare he mock her parents!

“It’s not that funny!” And thus, she dumped their pail of cold seawater over his head. 

Harry spluttered, shocked, and then bolted after her from where she was stalking away up the beach. “Hermione!” 

Somehow, the language that came out was Welsh. “I don’t want to talk to you! My parents might be freakish but no more so than yours! Your father thinks barking like a dog is funny!”

“Aw, Hermione, come on!” Harry hopped around her, trying to get her to meet his gaze, “I’m sorry, okay? I’m just processing here.” 

“You are entitled to your emotions and to your reactions only insofar as they do not hurt another person.” Hermione repeated Psychologist Number Four, who was fond of mantras and sayings, and added, “My parents have been dealing the best way they know how. I might not like it, but at least they’re trying!” 

“They are trying.” Harry agreed. “They’ve done a good job with you, and I’m sure their nappy texts were the talk of Sussex.” 

Hermione screeched, and moved determinedly up the beach until Remus asked her, “Alright there, Hermione?” 

Hermione grabbed her book and proceeded farther along the beach, favoring Remus with a look that clearly said it was not alright, and he was quite dull indeed for asking. 

Remus accepted this, and turned his gaze to Harry. 

Her father, oblivious, called out, “Don’t go too far, Bunny. You’re apt to get lost.” 

Hermione was largely directionally challenged, but now was not the time to suggest that she would get lost walking in a straight line, although she had in the past. Still, she found a bit of stand unspoiled by strangers or by family nearby, and made a beeline for it. 

Hermione heard them talking as she parked herself on an unoccupied plot of dry sand, “I’d advise thinking about whatever you said and reflecting upon why saying it was not nice before attempting another apology.”

Hermione huffed and opened her book, Paulo Freire in the original Portuguese. See if she told him anything ever again. Just see if she did. Hermione was absolutely seething. Her parents were being awful, but they were hers and she loved them. They were trying to compensate, and Hermione understood their actions to be borne of love if not good sense. 

“Great advice, Papa.” Harry snapped, toweling off his soaking hair. “I think she just wishes it was legal to behead me.”

Hermione did not say anything, for she had nothing nice to say. 

“Isn’t the 20th century lovely?” Remus asked, opening a Honeydukes bar. “It’s so important to focus on the here and now, isn’t it?” 

Hermione saw her parents exchange a glance, surprised and shocked. Hermione’s eyes clapped on Harry’s, and she realized with a sinking heart that they had done what they’d set out to do, and made her parents think. It was clear that their resident DADA professor saw more than he let on. 

After a time, Harry plopped down beside her. Hermione continued reading for a while, until Harry worked up the nerve to speak. When he did, she held up a finger, finished her sentence, and stuck the bookmark between the page before setting the book on her knees. 

His voice was soft. “I really am sorry, Hermione. I haven’t got an excuse for making fun of them. I know you love them. I love them too.”

She replied in German, just because. “I know.” And she did know. “There are worse things in life than an inclination to being bookish.” 

“It’s sensible.” Harry agreed, “But I’m not, really. You’re never scared of anything, not even when you’re certain you’ve gone around the bend. But me? The idea of what you said happening is scary.”

Hermione empathized, though she did not correct his erroneous perception of her bravery. “It’s okay to be scared. You’ve got time to figure it out, you know.”

“All the time in the world?” Harry ventured, with that grin of his. 

Hermione pretended to consider her response carefully before replying, “Something like that.”

And so, the fight was put behind them. Within another hour or two they felt they had thoroughly spent enough time at the beach. Remus and Sirius clandestinely tidied them, and they went for dinner nearby. For the first time, thanks to magic and her sunblock, Hermione’s pale skin was free of even the slightest burn.

Later still, she and her parents dropped Harry and his parents off home in enough time to feed the stock and tend to the goats. Hermione knew he’d felt badly, because he engaged her parents in a totally pointless discussion on modern television and _Star Trek_. His efforts to engage with her parents said more than any apologetic words might.

Still, it was nice to have both. 

* * *

 

And so, the summer passed in that same happy fashion, with no real arguments beyond occasional spats that were easily resolved. They occasionally discussed visions and promotions and what they might mean, but largely, Hermione felt as though the intensity of her visions had dropped off after intensifying over the last year or so. Privately, Hermione thought that it was because she and Harry had found one another. 

The powers that were, it seemed, were content to let them have an idyllic summer. Her parents relented their English-only rule, and so Hermione combed antique texts and all manner of wizarding literature. She borrowed them from Harry by the box, and he taught her how to drive the pony cart on the moor and the dirt tracks that separated their homes to ferry them home. The two-wheeled cart bumped along happily with increasing frequency, and Hermione considered herself a very competent driver. 

The same could not be said for her flying ability, and so when Harry and Ron went flying or went to Ron’s house to play larger games, Hermione was happy to laze about the house or farm or join Neville as he conducted experiments with various plants. He was incredibly gifted with plants, and Hermione learned a lot about magic from him. Outside of Harry, he was her dearest friend. 

There was little change in her parent’s habits all told. It did frustrate Hermione, but she understood that there was little she might do. She was working on a jumper, a cardigan, when she felt a vision wash over her. With dawning clarity, Hermione knew just who she was meant to share this vision with, and went to make sure that a small addition to the farm would be alright with the Potter-Lupin-Black family. 

That night at dinner, Hermione looked to her parents. She knew that this was a test, not that she was expecting it to go one way or another. “I’ve had a vision.” She realized that this was the first time she had said those words to her parents. 

They stilled, but said nothing beyond asking her to continue. 

Hermione did so, revealing what she had seen with some detail. “Tomorrow, Dad, you’ve got a patient coming in at thee. He’s going to go on about how he has too many sheep. He’ll say something like wanting to post a notice in your waiting room.” Hermione came to her point, “I’d very much like those sheep.”

“Do you routinely have these over future matters?” Dad asked. Their focus had largely been of a historical nature. Hermione hoped that the truth did not see them trying to learn more about divination and reading tarot, or some such. She didn’t think she could stomach being made to feel like she was living with two wannabe infomercial psychics. 

“Yes.” Hermione allowed, “Though I sometimes don’t know how or when it will happen until it does. It nearly always does, unless I willfully do something to circumvent it.” 

One such example was Harry’s potential little brother. 

Mum looked at her with misery plain on her face, “You have no idea how much we regret being so totally unable to see your abilities for anything but illness. I’m kept up at night over it, and I want you to know, Hermione, how so very sorry Daddy and I really are.”

“It’s over.” Hermione repeated herself as she had countless times, “I’m not angry, because I know you love me. I think you’ve done a lot to try and accept me now, and that’s all I really wanted. I never thought you hated me, but I don’t like feeling like you’d both choose a daughter like Mary Frances over me.”

Mum looked heartbroken. “Bunny…”

It was all she could do not to stick her chin out when she said, “Mary Frances is dull.” 

Mary Frances passably intelligent, happily social, and altogether totally boring and banal. She was, in a word, stereotypically perfect. When parents were dreaming up a daughter, it was invariably Mary Frances they described. For her part, Hermione found her company insufferable. 

“Very dull.” Dad agreed, “There is a lot Mummy and I would do differently in raising you, and in life, but you yourself are not one of them.” 

“I know. It’s just…” Hermione blinked back tears, “It’s hard, because there are so many ways I don’t feel like other kids my age. I don’t feel like we need to keep secrets over this. I have visions. I am a Seer. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t more to me, and I don’t want to make the mistake of anyone getting caught up in having answers as…”

Hermione trailed off, unwilling to hurt them. 

“We did in finding them.” Dad finished the statement for her. 

Hermione nodded, knowing that now was the time to tell them they needed to set aside their newfound historical passions. “I just want to let this be for a while. If something comes up…”

Hermione was glad to see that her parents knew that they were free to ask, at any time. Dad accepted what she was saying, and understood what she did not say, “We’ll ask.”

“But in the meantime, Bunny, thank you for telling us.” Mum’s tone was genuine, and Hermione hated the pain in her eyes, because she knew it came from the depths of her soul, “I know we haven’t made communication very easy for you. We’re determined to do better.”

Hermione nodded, the sheep out of her mind. It seemed very clear that the sheep were not the point of that vision, though she did file the desire for a few away in the back of her mind. It would be nice to have some sheep for her spinning, after all. 

The next day, there were six sheep in a pasture at Rowan Hill. Hermione laughed when she saw them. Her sense had been that the sheep were metaphorical. And yet, she was the proud steward of her own flock. Hermione never asked if they had come from the three o’clock patient, and her parents never told her. 

Finally, her visions and abilities weren’t the point. 

In all actuality, it was nice. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The past life I'm reference is loosely based on that of [Emily Davison.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Davison#Early_life_and_education) She was totally badass. Reports are inconclusive as to if she meant to die for the cause. 
> 
> In Hermione's past life, she was a suffragette who knew what she was doing in that moment, and did mean to die. Harry died on the Front sometime in 1916, about the same time Hermione did, so the timeline is different. Also, clearly, there is no evidence whatsoever that ED had a childhood friend whose father opposed women's rights. 
> 
> Given that the chapter was about Hermione learning to use her voice, the parallels between the lesson she's learning now and the lessons she learned as a suffragette are clear, and it's not a surprise that that incarnation would be foremost in her mind.


	3. I had rather be with you than have all the goods in the world. Good lady, they that keep us thus asunder remember full little what they do.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "...we that ought by right to be most together are most asunder; it seems a thousand years ago since I spoke with you. I had rather be with you than have all the goods in the world. Also, alas! good lady, they that keep us thus asunder remember full little what they do."   
> \--Richard Calle to Margery Paston, his bride from whom he was kept separated for three years by her family, whom had employed him as their land manager.

Hermione was, as the summer progressed, certain of one thing. She did not want it to end. The summer, for once in her life, had made sense. She spent her days rambling about the farm, discovering and investing in parts of herself that she had so long surpassed enabled her to feel free. She put her hands to work that she valued. She had fun, and felt at peace. 

She had friends that understood her, Neville and Ginny. Through Harry’s parents, she met Susan Bones, who had also introduced her to Hannah Abbott. They three had become something like friends, and thanks to wizarding technology, the distances in-between their homes was not a barrier to interaction as it might have once been in another time. Still, if pressed she would have named Neville as her best friend. 

It was the childhood her parents had long wanted for her, long dreamed of her experiencing. They seemed to accept her more. Hermione knew it was hard work for them to let go, but she certainly appreciated their efforts to that end. She tried to tell them what it meant to be living here in Cornwall, knowing they had left their lives behind to give her this chance, not knowing it would mean so much, but she could never find the words. She hoped they understood what she could not say. 

Her mother, in her usual fashion, began to make a fuss over her new uniform for her last year of muggle school. Mum was always one for being prepared. Being that she was going to a new school, she would need all new uniforms and sports kit, not to mention all of the things that one purchased to compliment those items. There was nothing they both enjoyed like getting organized for a new term, ordinarily. 

Hermione was not looking forward to yet another year of intellectual boredom. She was acutely aware of feeling as though she was wasting time, as she had wasted so much of her muggle education. Hogwarts did not teach higher mathematics outside of arithmancy, and there was little  of muggle literature to say nothing of muggle history. She had a plan to fix it, and she knew that she was going to get her Mum to see reason, even if she had to admit to past mistakes to do it. 

While they were headed to the shops in Exeter, Mum looked dubiously upon her subdued form in the passenger seat, “Usually, you’re jumping up and down at the thought of school shopping, Hermione.”

Hermione clutched her Filofax, and looked down at her brown boots. She didn’t have it open to an itemized shopping list full of school supplies and various items she’d discerned she needed after careful reflection and study. Instead, she clutched the leather gently in her lap, staring at it for a long second before formulating a response. 

“I feel like I’m wasting time.” Hermione admitted, her voice soft but insistent underneath polyphonic chant, “I feel as though I’m going through the motions of being a schoolgirl, when really, I know I could pass my A-levels if I tried.”

Hermione caught her Mum’s look of disbelief. “It’s not braggadocio. I really think that with private tuition, I could finish up my muggle schooling before I went to Hogwarts. I’ve made up a preliminary timetable.” She opened out her trusty Filofax and began to flip to a new section she had made over the last few weeks, “And, according to my—”

“Bunny, you can’t have home taught lessons with Harry.” Mum asserted, passing a lorry, “He might have a private tutor, and that works for him, but you two cannot spend any more time together. I’m not entirely sure Mrs. Bray would be able to take you on.”

“I wouldn’t want to do my lessons with him.” Hermione balked, “He’s not very serious about his academic undertakings, Mum.”

Harry, while brilliant, was something of a lackluster student. He aced exams, though he read what he liked, paying little attention to his problem sets or the work that did not rank as important in his mind. His own interests dominated his time, and though he struggled occasionally with writing and composition, he was well on his way to being in a place that he could finish up his muggle schoolwork over the summers between terms at Hogwarts. He could finish this year if he had a mind to, but he did not, because he was rather preoccupied with his land management, or so he said. Hermione thought perhaps he just wanted to keep seeing Mrs. Bray. 

“Oh.” Clearly, Mum had misunderstood her motivations. “What is it that you want?”

“I want an evaluation.” Hermione replied, glancing down at the to-do list that ranked this as number one, “I’d like to be evaluated for the appropriate educational level, and then placed in that level for the remaining year of my muggle education.”

Mum’s voice was flat, totally devoid of emotion. She stole a look at her daughter, shook her head, and deadpanned, “You want an evaluation.”

“Yes.” Hermione affirmed. It seemed a good compromise. She had done a great deal of research into home teaching in Cornwall, but she had eventually come to the conclusion that her parents were a bit too traditional for that sort of thing, no matter that institutions had only really been commonplace in more recent years. In school she would stay. 

Mum blurted, “But we’ve had you evaluated routinely!”

Hermione knew that it was time to confess the truth, one she had flatly denied to every single psychologist who had seen through her actions. She allowed, trying her best to be gentle, but knowing there was no way to avoid the discomfort of this honesty, “I was annoyed at your continued assertions of my abnormality, so I was determined to prove that I was capable of being, in fact, quite normal.”

Mum choked on her own spit for a long second, “You mean to tell me that you’ve cheated on your educational evaluations?”

“Certainly not.” Hermione shook her head, “I gave them the answers they wanted.”  By the very definition of the situation, those had been the correct answers, no matter how juvenile and simplistic. 

Mum sighed. 

* * *

And so, Hermione was accelerated through junior school. She was, in fact, accelerated directly through onto her sixth-form, though that process took a few weeks and several meetings with countless professionals at her new school. To their credit, they didn’t laugh her out of the office, and they were intent upon working with her unique needs. Once they understood her needs to succeed, they were single-mindedly intent on providing that environment. Hermione met many of the teachers, and was confident, for the first time, that she would actually be challenged in her schooling in a positive way.

 Hermione was not surprised, nor was she swayed by her parent’s concerns that she would be out of step socially. Dr. Green’s results could only be termed as accurate, and sensible, despite her parents and their reactions. They hesitated, and though Hermione knew that their disbelief of the results was not a disbelief of her, it was still something that gave her considerable pause. Their reservations, Hermione knew, were not so much about how things seemed, and how they would impact her. 

She reminded them gently that she was always going to be out of place socially, but set aside the fullness of the truth that social inclusion was not as much an issue as it had once been. She had friends now. Her parents were keen to have muggle friends, but the whole thing was semantics and they knew it. She had friends, and that was the only thing that mattered. She had a plethora of friends, all based in the magical community, to be sure, but that was her eventual home. She did not expect to find many kindred spirits in muggle school. 

 She set her future when she very calculatingly added, “And besides, this will allow me to go onto Uni after Hogwarts, if the subjects there are converted to A-levels I don’t take now.”

“How could such a thing be possible?” Her father asked, as he set down the final packet from the  meeting they’d just had with Dr. Green on the counter, “Hogwarts is a secret.”

“There have been cases where a bit of conversion has allowed students to go onto Uni, though they didn’t have their A-levels beforehand, as well.” Hermione replied to the dual questioning looks that came her way, “I did some preliminary research, by which I mean I asked Remus and Professor McGonagall.” 

Her father sighed, “We agreed you would not badger the poor woman, Hermione.”

“A relevant question about my future is not badgering.” Hermione grinned, “And anyway, Harry wrote and he included my parchment with his own. He plans to go to the RAU.”

“Cheeky monkey.” Mum asserted, though Hermione saw her hiding a smile. “Dad and I will discuss the possibility of having an eleven year old Sixth former, if it’s all the same to you. Go find something to read until dinner.” 

Disinclined to push her luck, Hermione did not reveal that she was magical books she’d borrowed from Harry, nor that said books were in Latin. By dinnertime, it was clear that Hermione would be, providing the consent of the school, be matriculating into Lower Sixth at the start of the term. She was glad she had calibrated her responses to the evaluation to achieve her aims with a minimum of fuss. 

* * *

Satisfied, Hermione put the matter of school out of her mind. She continued her customary activities of tending to her sheep, all named after famous nuns. Harry, for himself, was all agog over his upcoming birthday and the things he hoped to receive. Hermione began working on a cardigan with deep pockets, something he might wear in the barn. 

The summer’s heat was thick around her as the green wool rested in her lap. Hermione, as was her custom, welcomed the altered mental state that such relaxation brought her way with regularity. She had not expected to find herself dropping into a vision, but allowed it to begin anyway. There was something nice about accepting them, knowing that those around her accepted them, too. 

Her hair was long, bound haphazardly back as she leaned over a candle to study a parchment that was weighted with ink and the wax of a seal. The stone walls around her, laden with shelves of food stores, swam before her eyes, and the young woman swallowed a lump in her throat. The sounds of a busy kitchen behind her filled the spaces between her thundering heartbeats. She read the letter carefully, clutching the parchment as one might clasp a lover. 

Her avatar’s eyes drank up the words on the page greedily, “ _My own lady and mistress, and before God my true wife, I with heart full sorrowful recommend me to you as one that cannot be merry nor shall be until it be otherwise with us than it is now; for this life that we lead now is no pleasure to God or to the world, considering the great bond of matrimony that is made between us, and also the great love that has been and I trust yet is between us, and on my part never greater…_ ”

“Margery!” A voice behind the avatar called out, strident and clear, and Margery stuffed the letter into the folds of her skirts, leaving the castle stillroom quickly to find a woman she knew in a moment’s glance to be her mother, “Have you finished the marchpane?”

“Not as yet, Mother.” Margery replied, ducking her head, “I am pounding the sugar most carefully.” 

“Pause and take some refreshment…” Her mother brushed back her hair gently, “You are mightily flushed.”

Margery clutched the letter behind her back far more tightly, and breathed. Her hair was uncovered, that of an unmarried girl, pulled back simply but not covered in any significant fashion. And yet, Hermione knew as well as she knew herself that this Margery was a wife in all legal and religious ways to the man whose mere handwriting filled her with passion and longing. 

The words she was about to speak were cut off with a loud bleat that shattered the vision as easily as the warm sun and the feel of her yarn had allowed her to drop into it. 

Margaret, one of the whiteface dartmoor sheep she loved so, knocked into her and Hermione was shoved from the vision and onto her belly. 

Standing up, she patted Margaret, and mused, “Have you ever heard of someone named Margery?”

Margaret ripped up some grass, and chewed, green drool dribbling from her mouth.

Hermione smiled, “I’ll take that as a no.” 

Later that day, she opened her Filofax and wrote the details of the vision very accurately and carefully. If she made marchpane that weekend, none but she needed to know the hows and the whys. In her heart, though, she knew that at least this time around there was no one, and nothing, that could ever separate her from Harry. 

* * *

 

The visions began to come fast and thick, with an intensity that shocked Hermione. She spent a great deal of time focused on Margery’s father, whom she had known later as Harry’s father in their last life. He was a man she would know instantly if he were in her life. Despite the antagonism in their dynamics she saw, she knew that this was a soul who loved her own desperately, and in a show of paternal devotion, filled the roles that were often hardest to fill out of love for her. She wondered one day if she would ever be able to find him. 

Hermione set aside her musings about Margery as Harry’s and Neville’s birthdays approached. 

She made Neville some soap out of beeswax he’d given her and wrapped it very carefully with fabric, so as to cut down on paper waste. The gift was small in terms of cost, but very dear in terms of usefulness and thought to Neville’s enjoyment of it. 

Hermione was not, despite Neville’s fascination and Harry’s ecological support of them, keen on bees. However, he had a walled garden at his house, and so long as they stayed away from his boxes, the bees were of no consequence to her.  Harry’s own bees were more of concern, but as they were vital to the ecosystem, she kept out of their way.

* * *

 

The summer was filled with things to do, and people with whom to share them. Mere days before his birthday, Neville had come over, as was his custom. Declaring her green yarn depleted by the nearly complete sweater, they went foraging. Hermione really enjoyed the activity, and the company made it all the more pleasant. 

Neville was adept at plant identification and Hermione found an apt companion in his herbal knowledge. Hermione sometimes was able to teach him a few things about foraging, but more often than not she contextualized what he had gleaned from other sources with personal experience and years of practice, though not a bit of it was confined to this lifetime. 

She dyed yet more of her own yarn, using nettles. To gather the aforementioned plant, she donned thick gloves and boots and jeans, and set off, basket over her arm. Neville trotted along at her side, his sketching book and pencil at the ready for the documentation of any interesting specimens. Neville brought such awareness to plant activities that she had an immense amount of fun with what otherwise might have been a chore. 

She had done this a thousand times before in countless incarnations. She felt a certain sense of connection to her eternal self when she picked nettles from a wide assortment of plants so as to sustain the ecosystem. The formic acid was blocked from her hands by her gloves, and so they spent a few happy gathering the plants she would need. Naturally, the nettles alone would not create the deep green she required, but the base was pleasing.

She was walking along the earthen path  that she had first trod with Sirius that long ago day, Neville her jolly companion, when she heard the clop of hoofbeats. Knowing by now what to do, she and Neville moved to the left side of the path to keep out of the way of the people riding horses. As Neville chatted along beside her, Hermione cast her eyes behind her to the bend in the path. Around the bend came Harry atop Bilbo and a blond boy atop Ginger. 

With Neville at her side, Hermione mentally paused a moment to consider who this might be, and then she recalled that it was Harry’s cousin, Draco. Draco was in their school year, but was a slight bit older than Harry. His birthday had been three weeks ago and he was related to Harry via James and Sirius. Though their parents did not get on, they wanted the boys to know one another. It seemed that even political differences did not discount the fact that family was family. 

Hermione had not been invited to his party, and by all accounts it had been dull. Neville had said he’d spent the entire time conversing with the Malfoy peacocks that roamed the garden. His Gran was quite keen for him to maintain social ties, though even Augusta hated Lucius Malfoy.  Knowing what she did of cousin Draco, Hermione had remarked to her friend that the peacocks had been more interesting company. Neville had laughed, and here they were, not hours later. 

“Speak of the devil.” Neville muttered, pasting a smile on his face as Harry noticed them. 

Hermione smothered an uncharitable giggle. Draco was just so bigheaded and absurd that she couldn’t help it. She had not met him, but she had known a thousand heirs and scions like him across the annals of time. She’d not forgotten the lessons they’d helped her to learn. 

Harry and Draco caught up to them in mere seconds. Harry was, of course, enthused to preside over introductions. Draco simply looked down his aquiline nose at her. Hermione had no time for such behavior, nor such judgmental attitudes. He was eleven, for heaven’s sake. He should be playing with Ninja Turtles and getting muddy with his dog, not fussing over and banging on about his imagined social position. 

She waved it off, mentally. That was, of course, until he started in on Neville in that snake-like way of his, his grey eyes cutting through Neville. Harry’s gloves tightened on the reins, and he opened his mouth to sharply protest. 

Hermione caught his eye, and grinned. 

Harry hid a smile. Hermione had this handled, and the little git would never forget the lesson she was intent upon teaching him. 

“You look like a hobbit, Longbottom.” Draco sneered, referencing the fact that Tolkien was one of their own. “Why are you two traipsing about the countryside like—”

Hermione cut him off, “Foraging has been fundamental to surviving in the United Kingdom for eons and is the foundation of much of modern art and science. There can be nothing more worthy of our time and personal attention.” She grinned, “Besides, it’s fun!” 

Draco sneered at her with an increased amount of disdain, “I’ve never foraged. Unlike squibs and their muddy friends, I don’t need to scavenge in the dirt and muck.”

“Draco, I’m warning you.” Harry intoned, his voice soft and sure, “Mind what you say, for you will live by them.”

“The company you keep—” Draco began,  waving his hand around, dismissing them as he looked to his cousin with some disbelief, “I mean really—”

“I understand you live in Wiltshire, Draco?” Hermione replied, blandly ignoring the tightness around Harry’s eyes and Neville’s rigid stance.

“And what of it?” Draco’s nose wrinkled. “I doubt you would have seen the Manor. It’s properly warded to keep out unwanted sorts.” 

“Well, I can understand why you’ve never foraged. You’ve never had the time, what with spending all of your time dragging a cheese-wheel down from the sky.” Hermione grinned referencing a regional tale pulled from the whispers of history, “But really, that was a story. Your ancestors were no doubt trying to hide their ill-gotten French brandy.” 

Even now, it was known that the Malfoy’s had some connections in Europe that were, politely put, outside of ministerial channels and oversight. Everyone turned a blind eye because they had money and influence, but Hermione knew how quickly such things could fade, even as they were still rehabilitating their image after the War. Image, to people such as Draco, was everything. 

“Well, I never!” Draco spluttered, like a maiden aunt, “Wait until my father hears about this, Granger!” 

“Now that you’ve put down the rakes, Neville would be glad to teach you to forage.” Hermione looked to Neville, “I’m sure Mr. Malfoy will be pleased, aren’t you, Neville?”

Draco spluttered as Neville nodded. Hamming it up, Neville gave an effortlessly correct nod in Harry’s direction and tipped his cap to Draco. “Malfoy, I’d be glad to take you out foraging any time you like. I’ll await your owl.”

Hermione gave a bob of a curtsy, and effortlessly began to stride away, toward home through the fields. Neville burst out laughing at her closing gesture, and headed after her within seconds. The curtsy, Hermione knew, had been just the right touch to make her point. She had barely inclined herself, and Harry knew it for what it was, mocking. 

Draco, however, probably wondered why someone like her knew how to bend her knee in wizarding fashion. It, Hermione knew, wasn’t wizarding at all. It had been in muggle use first, imported into wizarding custom when the two cultures were commingled. 

They were barely out of earshot when he whispered, “I don’t know if he’s back there wondering if the moon is cheese or if he is actually the king of the madhouse.” 

Hermione looked quickly around to see that, although they had begun to move again, Harry’s shoulders were shaking with the force of suppressed laughter. Malfoy still couldn’t make ups or downs of what Hermione’s closing intention had been, and that was wholly the point. She was quite content to keep young Master Draco on his toes. After all, crossing swords with Draco had been one of her greatest hobbies across the sands of time. 

* * *

She spent days making the right shade of dye, and returned to knitting, her fingers stained with green, despite her best efforts to keep her nails and fingers clean. Her mother despaired, saying she looked as though she had a fungal infection, but Dad just laughed and told Mummy to pop into SpecSavers. Mum cleaned her glasses and frowned at Dad, and life went along. 

She had many visions about Margery, but it was mostly the poor dear reading letters from her estranged husband and composing replies against the backdrop of the her family’s machinations. One particularly strong vision had shown Margery sneaking out to meet her husband, but Hermione had not been able to follow that journey to its end. She did know, however, that Margery loved her husband with a constancy that spoke to a commitment for the ages. She wished she knew why they were being kept apart, though she suspected it had a lot to do with her father’s ambition. 

In Margery’s life, it had not been channeled in the best possible ways. In other lives, this same soul had been her protector, her teacher, her confidant, all wrapped up in the role of devoted father. Still, she was shaken deeply by this negative portrayal, and wished she could cling to happier memories. Despite her desires, it was Margery’s father who stuck in her mind. 

However, her time to study and find out the whole of Margery’s story was limited due to her pre-term reading list. Though she read quickly, she was determined to be an active and integrated member of her cohort from the start, and that took preparation. She organized texts and plowed through them, working with singleminded focus, much in the way that Harry was keeping to his barn. 

She could not live in the past. What had been had been, and Hermione needed to keep her eyes to the future. It was the future that was unwritten, and it was the future that she could control. She was determined to make the most of it all, no matter how many futures she had left. 

* * *

 

Harry’s birthday dawned brightly. The night before, they had all piled over to Neville’s for cake. Harry would have his own remembrance at lunch, and then a shared party with their larger circle of friends at dinner tomorrow. Three cakes in three days was a bit excessive, so Harry had requested treacle tart for his solitary celebration. 

Despite the gaiety, the work of tending their animals was no respecter of persons or days. Hermione fed the sheep, tended a bit to the garden because it was looking a bit unkempt, and went inside the barn to find Harry grooming Ginger carefully, looking pensive. 

This Hermione could not abide. Though chores on his birthday were given, so should smiles also be part of his day. Saddling up to his side, she tried to smile widely. His glumness made her joy hard to hold onto, emotionally, but Hermione knew he needed her. “It’s your birthday!”

Harry glanced up as he continued to groom his horse, “I guess so.” 

“You know so!” Hermione exclaimed, looking in vain for a curry comb, “Here, I’ll help with the horses and you can tell Ginger all about it.”

The mood was so heavy that Hermione knew her forced joy rang false. Outside the stall, one of the cats ran past, chasing as she was some imagined prey that was truly a bit of dust. Hermione had never seen the house cat move quite so quickly, and she supposed Socks had made a dash for the outdoors in difference to the lovely weather. 

Harry smiled, but it did not reach his eyes. “It’s nothing.”

“I’ve heard that before. To my recollection, the last time you said that, we were plunged into war.” It seemed that Harry was not amused by her joking, because he stepped away to fetch the fly spray, even as she spoke. Hermione made no bones about following, “Please talk to me.” 

Harry was silent as they returned to Ginger’s side, “Harry, please.” 

“I’ve got to work this out myself before I can put it into words.” Harry gripped the spray, and began to fiddle with the settings on the nozzle. Hermione was glad of this, because he missed entirely the look of uncertainty that crossed her face.

Swallowing, Hermione accepted his words, “I’ll just go.” She thought quickly, back to the bustle that was the wide stone kitchen that she had gratefully fled, “Sirius is already on the verge of driving Kreacher mad.”

Hermione patted Ginger in farewell, and turned to walk away. Before she had so much as left the aisle, she heard a heavy mutter. She paid it no mind, even as Harry called out, “Hermione, wait.”

Harry was hurrying along after her, pushing his glasses up his nose. Hermione turned, and simply waited. He’d asked her to wait. Truly, she wasn’t particularly in a mood to have a row. She just felt a bit rejected, a bit unsure of their dynamics, and a little foolish for feeling as she did at present. “What do you want to say?” 

“It’s not you.” Of this Harry avowed himself, and Hermione had a sharp flash of him as he had been, and would be, and always was, in that he saw her, for herself. “It’s nothing you did. It’s nothing anybody did.”

“I didn’t imply otherwise.” Hermione folded her arms across herself, “Why do you feel this need to assure me?”

“Hermione…” Harry shook his head, his green gaze too knowing in the scant space between them, “You’re annoyed because you can’t take one look at me and know what’s bugging me, and I get that, and I get that you’re jittery about the myriad of possibilities. I just need time.”

“You have time.” Hermione replied, “With global warming, I’m not sure how much time anyone has, but I think we’ll probably fit another few lives in, all told.”

“I refuse to live through the end of the world. Someone here at the start of it should not have to see its end.” Harry put a hand gently on her elbow, “Can I hug you?”

Hermione simply stepped into his space, and put her head on Harry’s shoulder. She felt him exhale and knew in a single instant that the something he could not articulate was deeply upsetting. Hermione wondered if perhaps he missed James and Lily. He didn’t really talk much about his birth parents outside of stories and laughs with his parents, but Hermione knew Sirius and Remus had done everything they could do to foster a bond between them. 

Hermione listened to Harry’s heartbeat through his cotton shirt, and promised him, “It’s going to be okay, whatever it is.”

“I know.” Harry affirmed, “You’re here.”

Though Hermione knew she should have worried about codependency, in that moment, she did not give it another thought. Their souls had been through countless turns of the wheel together, and Hermione knew that, come what may, they would face it together. It was only natural that they would each find comfort in that truth. 

She closed her eyes, and let their togetherness overtake her, settle her mind for a long moment. In the shadows of her mind, she saw flashes of countless lives, but not one of them dominated the here and now that was dominated by the slow and steady thrum of heartbeats.

They matched, as they always did. 

* * *

Hermione had assumed that Harry had settled his internal worries, at least slightly, after this morning, but that wasn’t the case. This did not become clear until the cake had been cut and their friends were sitting at a table on the terrace, laughing and joking about Hogwarts. In a year, Harry would be facing his first term as a boarding student. 

It was abundantly clear that Harry was less than thrilled regarding the inevitability of this fact. Like a sunrise, something clicked within Hermione, and she knew. She knew utterly what was bothering Harry. It was their impending trip to school that was setting him off into melancholy, even if they did have a year left to go. 

Neville noted this, too, and changed the subject. As with many boys, be they magical or mundane, Neville’s interests ran to the mechanical. He was blathering on about his estate's tractors within seconds, needling Harry about his refusal to even look at modern machinery. 

Harry’s response rather than being gentle and teasing, was terse. “I’m not putting perfectly good animals out of work because you say I ought to modernize.”

“Sounds like somebody should get off his high horse.” Ron chortled at his own joke, “Don’t worry Neville. Work smarter and not harder, and all that rot.”

“Yeah, because soil compaction is just so sensible.” Harry shot back, sticking his fork into his dessert, “Not to mention the carbon output of your average—”

The girls at the table shared a single glance. Hannah, Hermione, Susan, and Ginny were of accord. They needed to bust this up before Fred and George came out of the kitchen and decided to settle the discord with pranks. They were somewhere cleaning up after the last one.  

Hannah cried, “Oh, I’d love a game of foursquare!” 

Susan was adept at making nice, smoothing things over, so it was no surprise that when Hannah suggested a game of foursquare that Susan took onus of the whole thing and hauled Harry away. Hermione, as he was pulled away backwards, stuck her fork on the corner of her plate and raised an eyebrow. 

Harry frowned. “Hermione!” _Help me!_

She merely nodded farewell and watched as Harry was overwhelmed by Susan’s competency and Ginny’s enthusiasm that he gave in to the game. 

Ron took a second slice, in no hurry to hasten after Harry and Neville and Susan and Hannah and Ginny. Not, at least, when there was cake to be consumed. “I wonder what’s with him.” 

Hermione shrugged, but her interest was piqued. As it stood, Harry avoided her gaze. Hermione resolved to let the matter alone. He’d asked for time, and time she would give him. Hermione finished her own cake and lemonade, the fizz cutting the sweetness of Harry’s and Neville’s cake. 

She wandered inside, and found her Mum conversing with Augusta Longbottom, Molly Weasley, Susan’s aunt, Amelia, and the Tonks ladies. Hannah’s mother smiled at her, every inch the warm Hufflepuff, but made no attempt to bring her into the conversation. Hermione wandered over to the bookshelf near the door behind them. She supposed the ladies over on the other end of the room had thought her to have left, because she noted with some interest that the witches were matchmaking their children, however informally. 

This startled Hermione, but not nearly as much as the actual direction of the conversation. As she perused the shelves, she heard the voice of Hannah’s mother, clear as a bell and bright, as it cut above the discussion to declare an assertion. 

“My galleons are on Neville and Hermione.” Mrs. Abbott interjected, “They’re friends, and their magics will clearly meld well.”

“They’re not even thirteen!” Mum blurted, shock in her voice, “They should be playing and thinking they all have germs.”

Hermione’s fingers stilled on the books. She supposed most girls of her age group would blush and feel embarrassed, or perhaps annoyed. However, Hermione was not most girls. She had been through this countless times. She’d been married off and she’d eloped. She’d had torrid love affairs, and she’d lived lives of chastity. She understood well this process, and the dynamics of it.  Though a great deal had changed over the eons, people’s marriage-mindedness had not faded in intensity, even as it had continually changed in tone. 

“Of course.” Molly agreed, “Magical people tend to want to bond early. It’s cultural.”

Hermione knew that there was a great deal of difference between the two cultures. She butted up against such things even now. Remus and Sirius ran a very modern home, wizarding in many facets, but undergirded by very pro-muggle sentiment. She knew, too, since her arrival in Harry’s life, that systems and undertakings at Rowan Hill skewed muggle to a greater degree. Hermione carefully pulled an interesting text from the shelf, though _Bravery and Bravado: What it Means to Follow Our Founder_ did nothing hold her attention. 

“Tosh.” Augusta inserted, her saucer balanced on her knee. “You know as well as I that when like finds like there’s little to do to change the natural course of things.” She looked to Mum, and offered, “It’s as fundamental as magic. It’s part of our magic.” 

“It makes my profession no easier, one way or another.” As ever, Professor McGonagall was as prosaic and as sensible as anyone Hermione had ever known, and Hermione had once known a fair few intellectuals and hardworking farm folk in her day. Minerva outclassed them all. Hermione knew of no better Grandmother for Harry. That was hardly a shock, after all, she had filled the role in countless lifetimes. 

Andy Tonks shook her head, and Hermione thought she saw the older woman hiding a very sly smile. “I think it’s somewhere in the middle.”

“Oh, you always do, Mum.” Tonks declared, shoving to her feet gracelessly, “I’m going to go find somebody to talk to about anything other than bonding.”

“As you should, dear.” Her mother replied, “While you’re at it, do take Hermione with you.”

Hermione flushed at having been caught, but she did not lower her gaze as the cadre of women turned to look her way. She waved gently, and Mum laughed.  

“Wotcher, Hermione.” Tonks spotted her in the corner, “Let’s go and leave the witches to their cackling over their brew.”

“I’ve never heard of a better plan.” Hermione agreed, shelving the book and trooping along with Tonks, whose hair was a vibrant lavender. 

When they rounded the door, Hermione heard Molly’s voice, but she chose not to push for information. Hermione knew well why Charlie Weasley made Tonks blush, even if she chose not to share that information. They were friends and teammates, and Charlie had his mind on dragons. Tonks was going to enter into the auror program. Hermione decided she would only meddle if asked. As things stood, Tonks was one of her dearest friends, along with Neville. Hermione figured that Tonks’s understanding of what it was to be different, coupled with the comedic young Hufflepuff’s own unique maturity, made them a good match. 

* * *

 

Hermione, after a wonderful time with Tonks, decided that she had better do the right thing and go and rescue Harry. Tonks headed for the loo, and Hermione made her way to the gardens. The sun was streaking across the sky in a brilliant sunset. She paused in the doorway to admire the sun in solitude. 

The light glinted on the gardens, and Hermione knew that for whatever else life directed her way, that her soul had found its way home again in finding Rowan Hill and her house nearby, though she was not so stupid as to think her residence with her parents her forever home. Hermione shook off the thoughts of her future. Perhaps some part of her was just a marriage minded old hen. 

In the distance of the garden, Hermione sought out the view of one inky-dark messy head. Harry was kicking around a football with some of the others. Luna was poking around the hedges with something that looked to Hermione rather like muggle 3-D movie glasses. 

Hermione considered joining them, taking up some spot amongst the lively group. For now, though, she was contented to stand on the sidelines. So much of her life had been spent in that fashion. Now, however, it felt beautiful. She knew that this moment was one she would cherish across the lifetimes she had yet to live. As if pulled by a shared thought, Harry looked up from where he was acting as goalkeeper. Their eyes met, and Hermione stared back boldly for the scant moment that stretched between them. 

It was broken by the sharp crack of apparition directly beside the lowered football net. In a scant second, the game halted. Hermione could not see who had arrived very well, but she knew Harry’s shout well enough to hear it above the excitable greetings. “Uncle Reg!” 

This, then, Hermione realized, was Sirius’s little brother. Hermione had not heard the whole story, but she had heard and gleaned that during the troubles the wizarding community had faced in the decades prior that he had nearly died. Hermione saw nothing but health and vigor radiating from the sharply dressed wizard. 

Hermione saw that Tonks had joined her on the terrace. The other girl added, “He travels for work. He’s got a lady friend he won’t bring home. I know who it is, naturally.”

“I’m asking because you want to tell me.” Hermione had been friends with Tonks long enough to know when the other girl was dying to get something off of her chest. 

“Personally, I think he could do better. He’s the reason we’re a family. He’s the reason Sirius was able to retain custody of Harry. He’s a real hero.” Tonks added information into the framework of Hermione’s knowledge, “And he could do so much better than Primrose Parkinson.” 

“You’re at school with her sister, if I recall?” Hermione asked, knowing full well that Tonks did not get on with the pretty Slytherin in her year, and delighted into morphing into her and saying vaguely taunting things. She rarely did such a thing, after all she prized justice and fairness. 

Tonks nodded as the crowd parted. Harry, Hermione noted, was looking for her. Either that or he was looking for something, but she would have bet that he wanted to preform introductions between her and his uncle. After all, he knew everyone else here. 

Hermione could not continue this conversation with Tonks, because Regulus and Harry were coming up the stairs to their right. Hermione steadied some irrational nerves, and smiled in greeting. She was conscious of the fact that, by all accounts, Regulus Black was a bit of blood snob. He didn’t think she was mud like Malfoy, but he did stick to the old circles, as Sirius called it. 

“You’re her, then.” Regulus Black appraised her after Harry had introduced them, properly but with some excitement. After all, Regulus was his only uncle, and Hermione was his friend. 

“I’m who?” Hermione asked, “If by ‘her’ you mean to ask me if I am a lightworker, I would tell you yes. However, I prefer to be called Hermione.”

She was aware that she was being strident, but no less so than the sharply dressed man before her. He was Harry’s cool uncle, but to him, she was a stranger, an interloper, out to better herself and stuff her oversized foot into a minute glass slipper meant for another foot. 

“I mean you no offense, Miss Granger.” And oh, it was clear that Regulus thought himself a charmer. For many people, he was likely gracious, charming, and effusive in his welcome. “It’s just I’ve heard tell of no one else for a decade. I can scarce credit Harry found you.”

“He didn’t.” Hermione returned, quite happy to put the facts to rights between them, as they had once been muddy between them, “I found him. Your brother was of assistance to me.”

“I saw the pensive vials.” Regulus smiled, “They’re very cute. I suppose you mean to keep him, then?” Regulus was joking, but the words chilled Hermione’s blood as they had once a century before, for he was repeating words he had no way of knowing he had once spoken. 

“Uncle Reg, don’t tease her.” Harry cut in, reading Hermione’s impassive face like a book he alone could decipher. “I’ve just barely convinced her we’re not all mad as hatters.”

“Harry, I am ashamed.” Regulus grinned jovially. Hermione heard those words in far different a tone. She was fighting a vision, and fighting it hard. It was no surprise that Regulus was a trigger, but she had never considered what role he had played in their last life. It seemed that some wounds were still fresh, some fears still real. 

Harry chuckled. Hermione barely restrained a gasp. “Yes, I know. To be a Black is to be mad as to be a Potter is to be pig-headed.”

“So, Hermione.” Regulus smiled in open fashion at her, “Who was I in a past life? A dashing bachelor uncle, I hope.”

Acid burned up Hermione’s throat to settle behind her teeth. She did not tell him that his soul had left her, he had died and left her in the care of her mother, who kept her under lock and key for three years to prevent her seeing the man that Harry had been. She did not let herself consider the juxtaposition of Harry’s conservative father with the father that loved her well, and had left her alone and powerless when she had needed him most. “Hasn’t Harry ever told you? In the last life I remember, you were his father. You were a politician opposed to the universal suffrage of witches.”

“You’ll be happy to know he’s very politically progressive, Hermione.” Harry wasn’t slow on the uptake and he knew how hard this moment was for her. “It’s his story to tell you, but he will, in time.” 

After all, she was staring her killer in the face. This was the man who had sent his son to war, and sent her to her death with a few strokes of his pen. His actions had indirectly set her on the path toward certain death, and without actions, they might have lived. Though she understood and accepted her death, wondering what his role would be this time did make her heart pound. 

She was sick with the feeling that she felt as though she knew him, and that she had missed him and cared for and about him. He had not always been the pen behind her death warrant, her adversary. Many times he had been a beloved father, and Hermione was sick with the warring knowledge and emotion within herself. 

“Naturally.” Regulus agreed, “But now is the time for more pleasant considerations. I understand you and young Longbottom are marking the anniversary of your birth on this night. 

Neville was clearly in on the tradition, because he came along the terrace to be addressed in unison. Hermione took solace in his warm and open face. Surely Neville would never befriend someone who had not grown to fill a different purpose in life. “Thusly, my present to you both is a day in Prague. The wizarding community there is second to none.” 

Harry was aglow with the notion of a day in Golden Lane with his uncle. Hermione was less enthused, and knew it would be a boy’s outing, as it traditionally had been for these many years. Neville, having heard, came forward to tell her that last year they had gone for a weekend to Boston. 

Hermione agreed that was to everyone’s benefit, and made banal chat for an agonizing moment before she saw Tonks on the edge of her vision, and made her polite excuses to flee. It was all she could do not to lift her skirts and run, though her skirts were muggle and scarcely and impediment to moving. 

“You look as white as a sheet.” Tonks was instantly concern and support personified. “He might be my cousin, but sometimes Reg isn’t as half as funny as he thinks he is. D’you want to go inside and eat the chocolates Remus hides in his desk?”

Hermione agreed, knowing that a pair of green eyes followed her as she left the terrace. Harry was not the only person who needed some space and time to settle their own minds. 

 Tonks did not ask, but somewhere between the third chocolate bon-bon and her fourth truffle, Hermione sighed. “No one ever considers the tough bits of remembering your lives. You remember a lot of negative things. It’s not all stores of knowledge. Sometimes it’s pain, too.”

“I’d considered that, honestly.” Tonks affirmed, “It has to be tough. I guess Reg was an antagonist of some sort?”

Hermione did not reveal the full tale. She owed the man Regulus now was, and his relationship with Harry, more respect and consideration. Even more than that, she could not exactly express the warring feelings within herself into a single coherent statement. 

“You might say so.” Hermione stuffed the rest of the truffle into her mouth. As she chewed, she considered the words she spoke once she swallowed, “Sometimes very good souls agree to do hard things to furtherance a plan, a goal. I suspect it was like that with Regulus, but it could also be that whatever he did in this life was a direct result of wanting to make different choices, to right wrongs, you might say.”

Tonks’s vibrant hair shifted, and for a single instant, Hermione saw her natural color, that of her mother. Hermione wanted to ask just what Regulus had done to inspire such an evaluation of his actions. Hermione knew that the best heroes often sprung up, not like she did, but men and women who did not back down from tough challenges because they were driven by something within themselves. 

“He did some pretty heavy shit in this life.” Tonks completely forgot that she was holding a chocolate bar, and it fell into the folds of her obligatory dress, which she topped with a leather jacket that had once been Sirius’s prized possession before it was outgrown, “I don’t know who he was, but I know who he is, and I know he’s a fundamentally decent person, despite that outside the family he’s a blood purist. I think he’d understand if you needed to put things out in the open between you two.”

“I’m not ready.” Hermione admitted, looking at the demolished box of chocolates betwixt them. She knew that soon her parents would come and tell her that it was impolite to isolate herself at parties, as they had a million times before. At least this time she was not off in a corner, alone. “I guess we should go rejoin the others.”

“Eh, they can wait.” Tonks waved off Hermione’s concern, “Did I ever thank you for that magical theory book you sent me last week? I finished it.”

It was by discussing various texts that they passed a good portion of the evening. When the others began to set off the muggle firecrackers that her parents had provided for the entertainment, Hermione and Tonks wandered outside into the balmy summer night. Tonks was summoned by her mother with the simple nod of Andy’s head, and so Hermione did the only sensible thing and avoided her parents and their censure. 

Hermione lingered on the path at the foot of the stairs, foolishly unwilling to approach Harry, who was happily setting sticks alight and laughing with his friends as those with wands made their effect more magical. She had no doubt that George was making notes to improve them, even as Fred was perilously close to singeing his fingers and eyebrows off with the way he was holding that one. 

After a mere moment, Hermione felt Harry approaching, though she kept her gaze to the scene before her. Harry saddled up to her side, “Are you okay?”

This question, Hermione knew, was asked in a soft undertone. It was Welsh, and a lilting song to Hermione’s ears. She had once derived a great deal of comfort from Wales. 

She replied in Cornish, the most modern she knew, because she wanted to make the point that although she felt uneasy now, that their future was not a mere replication of the past. “In time. We both just need time.”

“I respect that.” Harry agreed, “Let me say this, however, so you know that I have said it. What happened then will not happen now. My loyalty is yours, and there is no question of where I belong in this world.”

Hermione smiled, knowing that, somehow, Harry had worked out his concerns about going to school next year, at least broadly. After all, in Cornwall or Scotland, Wales or Ireland, there was nowhere else he wanted to be than beside her. The rest, Hermione knew, would come in time. It was clear that they had time aplenty. “Happy Birthday, Harry.”

“It’s been my favorite so far.” Harry allowed, a soft smile on his face as the sky glinted with color and light. “Though really, I’ve lost count. How old am I?”

“Prat. You were born in 1981.” Hermione returned, “Just because your soul is literally old as the proverbial dirt and you remember it doesn’t give you special privileges.”

“I’ll remind you you said that sometime.” Harry promised, “Just you wait.”

Hermione agreed, and if she wiped chocolate wafer crumbs off of her Laura Ashley dress in the darkness, no one needed to know. She knew that the waiting wouldn’t be passive, or boring, and for the first time since meeting Regulus Black, her heart slowed. 

* * *

The summer drew to a close, and whatever seemed to crop up between her and Harry faded before he and Ron and Neville finished the leftover tart and cakes between them. Still, she found herself avoiding Rowan Hill, as Regulus was in regular residence there. She did not hate him. In fact, some part of her longed for the closeness that she knew could exist naturally between them. She waffled between loathing him, missing him dreadfully, and simply being angry about it all. Her own demons held her back, and their interactions were painful and stilted for all involved, though they hid it well behind witty games of wordplay. 

Hermione knew that her relationship with Harry was as rock solid as it could be for a pair of children. He gave her space and time, asked no questions about Regulus she could not answer. He was a stalwart companion, and yet Hermione knew that the tension between her and his uncle was a painful sticking point for him. Thereby, Hermione avoided Rowan Hill more and more for the waining weeks of summer.

Hermione played it off to her own parents as bookishness, and smiled tightly when she repeated the lie to Remus and to Sirius. She did not lie to Harry. He did not press her, and came over when he could, though things were very busy at the farm, and Hermione spent many an hour with him in the barn and the fields. 

The weeks passed. Hermione read her course books, and noticed with some shock that school began tomorrow. She was not required to wear a uniform, and so she dressed simply, grey trousers and dusty green blouse. She owled Tonks for assurances as to her sartorial decisions, and accepted Neville’s good-luck herbal sachet with deep gratitude. Though she missed him deeply, she did not see Harry that night, nor before breakfast, as he was wrapped up in Regulus.  

Mum dropped her off, though Hermione absolutely drew the line at having her Mummy escort her inside the school and to her teacher like she was in reception. Hermione knew that she had to get off on the right foot, and knew that any mention of her age would be a death knell even before she began to make a place for herself amidst her new cohort. 

Hermione found that the other girls, once they noticed her in their midst, welcomed her. Some did so more warmly than others, but it was clear that these girls accepted difference readily, and her age was hardly the most diverse factor amongst them. Hermione liked these girls even before she had time to analyze the thought. 

They seemed to, by the end of the first week, regard her as one of their own. Kate had parents going through a divorce though she found solace in literature, Izzy had a keen mind for science and trouble with her boyfriend, and Harpreet was focused on her future career in medicine. She came from a long line of doctors, but unlike her ancestors, she wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon. Somehow, amid class discussions and tea breaks, Hermione found her feet with these girls. They were not close friends, but the atmosphere was collegial and warm. Hermione had hopeful thoughts for her future at this school. 

What Hermione did not like, however, was an appointment that had been sprung upon her. Evidently, her parents had agreed that she should have sessions with the school psychologist until such a time that the school felt her to be acclimated. 

“You do, Hermione, understand that this is standard operating procedure for us when we have students in nontraditional situations?” Dr. Michelson asked, “We want to do all we can to help you get off to a good start.”

“You could try letting me get on with it and reassessing in a few months.” Hermione returned. She was not being unkind, but she had bigger fish to fry than sitting in this cheery blue office in a chintz chair, chief among them finding Margery and tending her sheep. 

“Why don’t we simply get to know one another?” Dr. Michelson asked, her feet tucked gently out of the way so as to appear open to communication. 

Hermione laughed. She couldn’t help it. “I’ve had six psychologists ask me that same question. Invariably that meant me spilling my guts without so much as knowing their names.”

“My name is Penny. Only my mother calls me Penelope.” Dr. Michelson revealed, “What else would you like to know?”

“Do you know of any historical figures named Margery?” Hermione asked on a lark. Margery could have been a historical nonentity, after all. It was marginally better to spend the time talking about nothing than sitting in silence. Hermione figured she could stretch a conversation about nothing across the whole session, as she had done in the past with very good success. 

Penny Michelson did not seem phased, and she answered the question with an alacrity that shocked Hermione. Hermione had expected her to turn the information in her question into a question of her own, something banal, like asking if Hermione enjoyed history. “I don’t, but I’m sure there would be information in the library.” Dr. Michelson stated the obvious, “Have you checked there, as yet?”

“I haven’t.” Hermione returned with some blandness. “Thank you for the advice.” 

Dr. Michelson nodded like Hermione hadn’t just told her she was stating the obvious, and ventured, “We could take a jaunt to the library, if you’re amenable. It’s closed, and so you wouldn’t be seen with me.”

“If anyone asked, I would just tell them you wanted to study a child prodigy.” Hermione asserted “I am not ashamed of my truths, Dr. Michelson.”

With some level of understanding between them, they headed through vacant corridors to the equally as deserted library. It seemed that the boarding girls were all at sport, and the day girls were either there or at music lessons or on their way homes. Hermione was learning to play handbells, but that group did not meet today. 

In a sense, Dr. Michelson acted as a research assistant. Hermione volunteered what little information she had, without revealing any background on how she had acquired such information and that enabled them to have a set of query questions, query questions Hermione had been using in the rare occasion she could devote herself to Margery without thinking of Regulus’s death and abandonment and her mother’s resultant actions.

Hermione was prepared to prevaricate, but Dr. Michelson did not ask for any information not related to the task. 

Between the two of them, they uncovered source material within thirty minutes, finally having the muggle resources she needed in order to discover the truth. Mrs. Swain at the desk was charming, efficient, and altogether lovely. She was everything she had seemed during her orientation sessions within her courses. She rather reminded Hermione of the librarian in _Matilda._ Librarians, Hermione determined, were the best sort of people. She could not wait to meet the librarian at Hogwarts. She was certain that whoever they were would greatly enhance her magical education. 

Mrs. Swain set the book down between them on the table, and began to excitedly skim the text, “Richard Calle to Margery Paston in 1469. It seems that Mr. Calle was their land steward, of the Paston family, that is, and he and the daughter of the house had something of a love affair.”

“It was one for the ages.” Hermione supposed, not really supposing at all. “I wish I remembered more.”

“Well, we can’t remember everything we read.” Mrs. Swain assured her, “Modern theorists suggest that we remember things we do, not things we read and repeat.” She closed the book, having found the words of the letter Hermione’s mind had scoured a thousand times reprinted in a book on the Paston Letters. “I’ll just go and check this out for you, Miss Granger.”

“Thank you kindly, Mrs. Swain.” Hermione began to clean up the papers and the detritus that came with research, and looked to Dr. Michaelson. 

Hermione avoided the young doctor’s gaze when the professional ventured, “Just where did you learn to read that sort of English?”

“I was there when it was evolving.” Hermione said, knowing full well that it would be taken as a joke. No one had ever caught onto her jokes, but then again she had never used them in therapy sessions because the main complaint had always been her insistence that she knew more than any little girl ever could of life. “One of my friends knew Gutenberg, too.”

Dr. Michaelson grinned. “I would have liked to meet a real knight. I fancy I could have been a good one.”

Hermione shook her head, “I wouldn’t give up air-con and antibiotics for anything, even if the music was particularly good. People forget how religious people were in those days. It was all they had to survive and hope for survival in very rough times. It’s not something discussed, really.” 

With that, the clock chimed. The session ended and Hermione went outside to find Sirius Black in a slick Aston Martin waiting to ferry her home. He laughed happily when she got into the car, “I have arrived in parenthood. I have done a school run.”

Hermione looked at the urbane man next to her and around the sleek vehicle. “We could have just apparated. Or you could give me a portkey.”

“It’s your first week.” Sirius declared, silencing any discussion of practicality. “You won’t have your first week of sixth form ever again. We ought to enjoy it.”

Hermione agreed, and stared at her lap. She knew Sirius had something he wanted to do and say beyond taking his pretentious Aston Martin out for a spin on the mundane roads of Cornwall. He did not rush to begin the conversation, but when he did, Hermione regretted opening the door, both to the car and to conversation as a whole. “I thought maybe we might talk about Reg.”

“Your brother?” Hermione feigned innocence. Over the last few weeks, Regulus had come to dinner regularly. It was his enduring custom, and Hermione had found that once she established a pattern of his comings and goings, she was at Rowan Hill less and less.

“You haven’t spent any time at Rowan Hill in over a week, Hermione, and this comes after weeks of spotty attendance.” Sirius was clearly more observant than he let on, though why this surprised Hermione she did not know, “Harry is adamant you’ve not had a row. Remus and I have begun to wonder if perhaps your avoidance of Rowan Hill, and by extension there the people who love you, has more to do with Reg being back in the UK than you would care to admit.”

Hermione stared blandly out ahead of her. “I bear your brother no ill will, and I know we are united in the reciprocity of that sentiment.”

“That’s very nicely said.” Sirius allowed, “No one thinks you’re resentful or angry, Hermione.” 

“Have you asked Harry?” Hermione asked, not willing to venture to the path upon which Sirius wished to conversationally tread. 

“He looks right through me.” Sirius chuckled, but there was no humor in it. “Makes me feel quite like a gnat bothering a lion or an annoying courtier annoying a king.”

Hermione knew well what he meant, for Harry was always one to be a bit high-handed and arrogant when he was worried. It sometimes translated as obliviousness and muleheaded-ness, but in truth, Hermione knew it to be focus and concern. “Remind him it’s the nineteen nineties, not the fifteen nineties.”

Hermione was selfishly glad that Harry had not, nor would he, violate the sacredness of their shared memory, even though he had every right to express the basic facts of the situation. After a moment of long silence, she admitted, “I’m just having a bit of past life bleed through. It’s nothing to worry over. It’s irrational and I regret I cannot change my feelings. I am trying.”

“You know, when Harry was a baby, he sometimes called Reg Father. Never Daddy, never Papa. Always a very formal ‘Yes, sir. No, sir.’ It broke our hearts to see him so leery and afraid, like that was the natural course of things.” Sirius recalled, “It doesn’t take Moony’s brains to know that your own hesitation is similarly rooted.”

Hermione sighed, “What did you do to help Harry?”

“We gave him time.” Sirius explained, “We tried to remind him in all the ways we could that things were different now, and whatever had happened would never happen now.”

“Is that why Regulus spends so much time investing in Harry?” Hermione pressed, thinking that the action made sense. Of course they would want Harry to make as many positive memories of his uncle as possible. 

However, Sirius shook his head. “It’s not obligation or duty. He genuinely loves Harry, and by extension loves whom Harry loves. I am not here to plead his case. I just want to know what I can do to help you. You are not the guest at Rowan Hill, Hermione.”

Hermione sighed, “I suppose Regulus is at Rowan Hill now.” 

Sirius nodded. 

Hermione thought for a long moment. She was not the retiring sort. She had fought wars and led countries. She had defended her home and her right to exist in any fashion she chose. She had so much strength to draw upon, and to not use it was an act of self-loathing. She could not change what she knew, what she remembered, but she could use it in the service of her choices now, she could use it to help her become a better person. To do anything else was unthinkable. “I’ll speak to him.”

“I’m not pressing you, I hope?”

Nobody pressed Hermione Jane Granger to do anything, and Sirius knew that as well as he knew anything. She merely arched an eyebrow in response, and declared, “I’ll be speaking to him alone, if you please.”

“Good luck impressing that upon Harry.” Sirius muttered. 

* * *

 

After a moment, he attempted to revert the conversation back to her education. Hermione had little to say, though she found that the rest of the drive passed in a seemingly short time. Once back at Rowan Hill, Hermione thanked him perfunctorily for the ride. She headed through the house only to find both Harry and his uncle in the garden, knocking a quaffle about with some enthusiasm. 

Within a moment or two, Harry touched down, the Firebolt Minerva had given him quavering with energy in his hand. “You look determined.”

Hermione smiled, “I am, actually. I’d like a word with Regulus. Would you please go away?”

“That’s harsh.” Harry returned, though Hermione saw no hurt in his face. “If you plan to do something vaguely illegal, I think you should let me be in on it.”

“I’m not going to hurt him.” Hermione declared, “I simply want to explore a few matters with him, which would be more simply accomplished if I did not have to think of your feelings in the process.”

“I was there, too, Hermione, all the times you loved and lost him, and all the times he betrayed your love.” Harry reminded her, though the gentleness in his tone simply underscored the resolve in his face, “It’s not a question of putting me in the middle. That alone I hope you know.”

“You don’t need to choose.” Hermione declared as she had many times in these past weeks,  “I’ll come find you. Please, Harry.” 

She did not know how to explain what it was that she hoped to accomplish, and if things went sour, it would in fact be best if Harry was not impacted by any bit of it. She wanted him to be able to preserve his good opinion of his uncle, and she would do nothing to sway it. 

Harry grinned, “Well, if you need to hide a body, I do have a bit of knowledge to fall back upon in that area.”

Hermione rolled her eyes, but before she could rebuke him, a voice spoke from above their heads, in flawless French. Hermione realized belatedly that they had slipped into that language. “Hello, Hermione. If I am to die, do let me put my will to rights this time.”

“I suppose you both think yourselves very amusing.” Hermione rose from the bench as Regulus touched down and passed his broom to Harry, “I quite fancy a stroll.”

And so in silence, they set off. Hermione, after assuring herself that a young Mr. Potter had not followed along, began to tell Regulus the story of Margery and Richard. “Margery’s family was dead set against the match. Her late father was something of a statesman, and her mother found a mere land manager, though educated and monied, beneath him. They forbade the match. Naturally, the pair defied all and betrothed themselves. Margery defended her union to the Bishop of Norfolk, and there was talk of kicking it up the ecclesiastical chain. Margery was kept locked in her home for three years.” 

“Clearly, her father flew off the broomstick upon finding all of this out.” Regulus posited, “I venture he was a man of principle and cunning, not used to being outfoxed by a slip of a girl.” 

“You would have better insight into him than I might, even if it only feels like guesswork to you.” Hermione revealed that the man standing before her shared a soul with her often-times father, though she did not tell him he had died before her marriage to Richard in that life. “You see, this man often appears in my life as a caretaker, as someone who sets the stage for conflicts that contributes to growth.”

“He’s a frequent player in your experiences?” Regulus asked, pulling a rose from a nearby bush and twirling it in his fingers.

“The most recent life I remember he was present to Harry as his father in that life. Again, he was a statesman, whom as I have said was conservative in his actions. He vehemently opposed a continued association with a girl from a neighboring estate when he learned that she was an avid and active campaigner for women’s suffrage. When she chained herself to the grille, it was the end.” Hermione relayed the rest of the story as best she could, and concluded, “It was not his fault they died, but he was something of an antagonist. I am afraid I have been treating you as I would have him, and that is not fair to you, Regulus.”

Regulus paused in their slow circuit of the garden, and sank to the bench. His aquiline face was ashen. “I don’t know what to say.”

“I’ve been having some flashbacks to Margery’s life in tandem with the life of that suffragette, both lives in which that man played fundamental if disparate roles. They happen.” Hermione rushed to assure him, “None of this is your fault. You are not that person. I am not that person. What was is not what presently is, and please do not make my mistake and conflate them.”

“Were there  ever any good dynamics, any good times?” Regulus asked, “I had reprehensible parents, and I always swore that I would never, ever, do that to any child.”

“You have not.” Hermione emphasized, “Regulus Arcturus Black has done nothing worthy of censure. By all accounts, you are a hero without equal.” 

Regulus snorted, and Hermione saw a flash of the humility she equated to Harry in her mind in that action. She continued, “Sometimes, the roles we choose in life are about gaining empathy and ending cycles. Sometimes the very best of souls take on tough things for the highest good of all.” Hermione revealed her theory, “We choose new circumstances to gain insight and to overcome challenges and flaws. By going through your childhood, maybe you laid some dysfunctional patterns to rest. God knows I’ve had to work to control a rash and narrow mind for centuries.” 

“You didn’t answer my question.” Regulus returned, “Have I always been a stumbling block?”

“No.” Hermione was quick to answer his honest question,  “Many times you were my beloved father. Your soul fundamentally has strong convictions about right and wrong, and I as a soul have learned much from you. Many times you were the bedrock from which I made challenging things. Your soul guided this country in times of great turbulence. You taught me to read and to write more times than I can remember, which is saying something in a time wherein that would have been left to governesses, if a girl was taught much beyond basic sums and handwriting.”

Hermione reflected on one particular life that rose to the fore, “In those cases, you regularly left me when I needed you most. You were slain in battle when I was young, many times, or murdered doing the right thing for a cause far larger than even Harry and me. Either I defy you and you repudiate me, or you die and leave a gaping hole in your family. Many times I sat wondering if you were well, only to later learn that you would never come home at all.”

That shook something loose in Regulus, because he whispered, “Walburga said the same thing when I was recovering. I hated her, and I pained her. I did that to you, too.” 

Hermione did not confess that she was frequently torn between being glad she had found him and terrified of what role he might play in this life. It was altogether easier to avoid him. Hermione did not confess this, though she did assure him, “I don’t often feel great amounts of empathic feedback from other lives.” 

“It appears that I too, must confess something.” Regulus began, “I have fostered this distance between us as well, and let the blame fall to you. I am a consummate Slytherin, and felt this the best thing to do. I know what Lightworkers do, what they are here to do, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the duty to rid the world of Voldemort will fall to you and Harry.”

“He’s dead.” Hermione declared, repeating what she had read in the books she’d found on the subject, though curiously none were found at the Black-Lupin household and she had borrowed several fanciful accounts from Ginny and some more factual ones from Percy, “He cannot hurt us.”

“He has horocruxes, bits of his soul he split to ensure immortality. I’ve spent the last decade trying to find them.” Regulus confessed, giving Hermione no time to reel over the disgusting implications of splitting one’s soul for such a purpose, “That’s my day job, to find and destroy them. I have one. However, I’ve never been able to destroy it. I do not know how many he made, but he boasted of several.”

“Boasted…?” Hermione was confused, and she knew he heard and saw it. 

“I was in league with him, Hermione.” Regulus revealed, his dark eyes reflecting pain that spoke of great mental and emotional torture, “Why? To please my mother, to preserve my standing, to make something of myself, whatever my reasons were, they were dark as sin. After Siri came out, and bonded a werewolf, I made disgusting choices.”

One thing she knew of Regulus was that he was a man of principle, and to know that he had been so brainwashed as a child was a pain to her. She knew too what it was to live with wrong choices and mistakes across eons. She carried some of that pain with her to this day. “I’m sorry, Regulus.”

“But there a came a day, shortly after I was seventeen, that I became more aware of plots and plans Voldemort had made involving people I love and loved.” Hermione knew that something on that day had forced Regulus to the precipice of decision making, and he had made the right choice, the choice that had enabled him to become a better, stronger, smarter, person. “I had already insinuated myself into the Dark Lord’s inner circle. It was an easy thing to do, as his second is my cousin Bella, and my blood is pure. When I made my choice, I was in the perfect place to act. I became a double agent for the Order.”

In soft tones, Regulus trusted her with his story, and it was one of bravery and pain unlike Hermione had ever heard. He seemed to remember after a time that he was speaking to a young girl, and modified his words, though Hermione got the gist. “I drank poison to retrieve the locket, 

and only survived because of Sirius’s damnable instincts and Remus’s muggle contacts, who know something about blood transfusions and dialysis. I don’t understand the science. I just know that I lived, and James and Lily died.” 

“Thank you for trusting me with your story, Regulus.” Hermione meant that very sincerely, as sincerely as she felt the tears clogging her throat, “I am sorry I’ve made that you relive some of these memories. I know what a hell that can become.”

“One supposes you must.” Regulus smiled at her,“As I said, I’ve pushed you away because I know that your arrival into Harry’s life was no act of happenstance. Something’s coming, and it would kill me to lose the two of you. Fundamentally, I adore you as a person and I celebrate the changes I see in Harry because of you.”

“It just doesn’t change your foreboding.” Hermione knew that if Voldemort came back, Regulus would be the top of his hit list, “I can’t imagine how you can look at Lucius.” 

“Malfoy doesn’t know, Hermione.” Regulus revealed, “My cover’s held all these years outside the sanctity of Rowan Hill. I work very hard to maintain it, knowing full well he would come back. Malfoy considers himself my friend and my relative.”

“Does Harry know?” Hermione asked, wondering how on earth she would tell him if he did not, but knowing that she would do her duty and tell him. 

“Not the details of what we suffered. It didn’t seem fair to burden a child with intimate knowledge of the events that left him an orphan.” Regulus replied, “But yes, he knows my fears of Voldemort’s return, and of the role he will play. There is a prophecy, actually there are several, but one or two more well relevant ones.” 

“There will come a time when all of our cards will need to be put on the table.” Hermione asserted, “I will await your decision.”

They sat in contemplation for a long moment. The sound of early autumn was thick around them. Hermione broke the silence with one single statement, “I’m not going to let you leave me this time. That’s not an option, do you understand?”

“Why, Miss Granger…” Regulus drawled in his plummy tones, “One supposes you might be fond of me.”

“Against some part of my better judgement, yes.” Hermione agreed, “And really, you need me to keep you on your toes.”

“I have some sort of feeling that you’ve been the cause of every wrinkle I ever possessed.” Regulus stood and offered her his elbow, which, despite her diminutive height, Hermione took. 

“Well, only a good three-quarters of them. Politics is not an easy job.” Hermione grinned, “Though one supposes you know that well.”

Regulus chuckled, and they went to join Harry. When this was all over, whatever was coming, Hermione knew that Regulus would no doubt make one of the finest Ministers for Magic in all of history. He had found and given reign to the greatness within himself, and Hermione knew that Salazar would be proud indeed. For herself, though, she felt that she had laid some of her ghosts to rest, even if in the process she had raised more questions than provided answers. 

In her heart of hearts, she knew that the pain Margery had felt in missing her dear father had begun to heal. The suffragist that had died by the machinations of her beloved’s father had found some peace in knowing that those things were past, and Hermione Granger felt some empowerment in knowing that whatever she and Harry faced, that they had an ally like none other in the complex man that was Regulus Black. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're getting into the upswing of the story!

**Author's Note:**

> It is said that William the Conqueror was desperately in love with his wife. She left an abbey and was unaccounted for for some time. In this story, she fled to Normandy, and to William. Matilda of Flanders was incredibly brilliant and ran Normandy in her husband's stead. In contrast to the times, there is no evidence that he strayed in his devotion to her.


End file.
